U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who serves on the 15-member Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, will take on the controversial relationship between security and civil liberties in a UO-sponsored speech March 18 in Portland.

Wyden's address, "National Security, Civil Liberties and the Surveillance State," will launch the University of Oregon's 2014 Wayne Morse Legacy Series. The free public event will be at 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave., in Portland. Registration is required at World Affairs Council Oregon.

Wyden, the senior U.S. senator from Oregon and an alumnus of the UO School of Law, has led efforts to balance security and liberty in a post 9-11 world.

His Portland presentation will include time for audience questions. It is co-sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society, the World Affairs Council of Oregon and the Oregon Lawyers Chapter of the American Constitution Society.

Wayne Morse was a U.S. senator from Oregon between 1944 and 1968. He was known as the "Tiger of the Senate," and is best remembered for his early and principled dissent against America's presence in Vietnam – including his opposition to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which pulled the United States into war.

Early in his political career, Wyden served as a campaign aide to Morse.

"Perhaps more than any other political figure I've either been around or studied, Morse embodied a sense of independence," Wyden said in a recent New Yorker profile. "I thought, 'This is what public service is supposed to be about.'”

The Wayne Morse Legacy Series continues throughout 2014 with additional public events in Oregon and Washington, D.C.

Margaret Hallock, director of the UO's Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, said the series will discuss "how Morse's teachings are still relevant in today's debates about national security.”

The Wayne Morse Center, which is presenting the legacy series, is a living memorial to Oregon's former U.S. senator. It is housed at the UO School of Law, and is dedicated to Morse’s vision of peace and justice through law and politics.

- from the UO's Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics