Berkeley - Former President William J. Clinton's Jan. 29, 2002 address to an audience at the University of California, Berkeley marks the latest in a long line of visits here by American presidents.

U.S. presidents who have visited the campus include President John F. Kennedy. His 1962 Charter Day address before 90,000 people at UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium remains the largest and one of the most memorable public events in the campus's history.

The first president to come to the campus was Benjamin Harrison, who arrived by carriage in 1891. Other presidents who have visited UC Berkeley include Harry S. Truman in 1948, Herbert Hoover in 1926 and 1935, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, William Howard Taft in 1909 and 1915, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 and 1911.

Bruce Cain, director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies and a political science professor, said the tradition of addresses by heads of state and by national and international political leaders at UC Berkeley reflects the campus's serious interest in promoting public discussion of important issues of the day.

"If there's any campus in the country identified with thinking about politics," he said, "it's us."

The Clinton talk was sponsored by the office of Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl and UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, in association with Cal Performances and City Arts & Lectures.