As Bates College begins a yearlong celebration of the 25th anniversary of its Edmund S. Muskie Archives, two panel discussions in May examine topics close to the late U.S. Sen. Muskie and to the college itself.

Muskie, a member of the college’s class of 1936, was a Maine governor, U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state whose achievements included landmark environmental legislation. The changing meanings of Earth Day are at issue in a panel discussion, co-sponsored by the Office of Sustainability and featuring an original Earth Day organizer, at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 6, in the Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

A panel the following week explores issues around diversity at Bates, which was the first co-educational college in New England and was founded by abolitionists. A Diverse History — Race, Class and Gender at Bates College in the 19th Century takes place at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 12, also in the archives.

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Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, please contact 207-786-6354 or this muskie@bates.edu.

Dedicated in 1985, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library preserves materials documenting the history and experience of the college.

Holdings include a nationally significant body of materials relating to Muskie, including an important oral history and documentary collection that is one of the largest representing a non-presidential U.S. political figure.

The panel discussion Earth Day: Then and Now will look at the evolution of Earth Day from its founding 40 years ago, a time when environmentalism was considered radical, to its current role as a mainstream celebration. Panelists include:

Barbara Reid Alexander, midwestern coordinator for the inaugural Earth Day;

Leon Billings, staff director of the Senate subcommittee that produced the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and later Muskie’s chief of staff;

Don Hudson, president of the Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset;

and Bates senior Emily Grady. She will present a paper written by Katrina Lacher, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma, about the mid-20th-century perception of environmentalism as a radical movement. Lacher, who is unable to attend the panel discussion, used the Muskie Papers extensively last summer to research FBI surveillance of the first Earth Day and Muskie as a result of his involvement with the early environmental movement.

Professor of Economics Lynne Lewis will moderate.

In addition, a short silent film of Muskie speaking on the original Earth Day celebration in Philadelphia will be shown.

In its review of diversity at Bates, the May 12 panel will draw upon early photographs, the papers of Bates’ founding fathers and oral histories about the first African American woman to graduate from the college. The panelists are:

Margaret Creighton, a Bates history professor, who will moderate the discussion;

Bill Hiss, Bates’ executive director for international advancement, who will talk about diversity in the context of the college’s early history;

John Smedley, a physics professor who will profile Stella James, a physics major in the class of 1897 who was the first African American woman to graduate from Bates;

and Tim Larson, of the Bates class of 2005, who for his senior thesis used the early records of Bates to examine the progressive tradition at the college from 1855 to 1877 (the end of Reconstruction) in regard to race, class and gender.

In 1978, Billings represented then-U.S.  Sen. Muskie at the Law of the Sea negotiations in Geneva where, over a 12-day period and after extensive meetings with the U.S. and other delegations, treaty modifications were made which resulted in the protection of U.S. environmental laws.

In 1978, Billings staffed the “Muskie Mission” to the People’s Republic of China, a 17-day, nine-member congressional trip of meetings and briefings in Shanghai, Peking, Hunan Province and Canton. Billings drafted the report to President Jimmy Carter on the mission.

In 1979, Billings accompanied Muskie on a special presidential mission to Lisbon, Madrid, NATO, Warsaw, Kracow and Bonn. He participated in Muskie’s meetings with heads of state of the countries visited and also drafted reports to Carter on that mission.

As executive assistant to the Secretary of State Muskie, Billings traveled throughout the world with him. In eight months, he participated in official visits to Brussels, Vienna, Ankara, Kuala Lampur, Mexico City and London, and was a part of the official party with Carter in the state visit to Rome, the Economic Summit in Venice and the Ohira funeral in Tokyo.

Billings also participated in meetings with 55 foreign ministers and chiefs of state during the secretary’s two-week participation in the United Nation’s deliberations in October 1980.

A 1959 graduate of the University of Montana at Missoula, Billings also did graduate work there. Subsequently, he worked as a reporter and organizer for farm groups in Montana and California, and for three years as a lobbyist for American Public Power Association in Washington, D.C.

He served on the Democratic Party Platform Committee Staff in 1968 and co-chaired a Democratic National Committee task force on energy and the environment.

Billings received the 1990 Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies’ Environment Award for outstanding environmental service. In 1981, he received the Philip A. Hart award from the Urban Environment Conference for his contributions to improvement in the quality of the urban environment.

A founding member of the Montgomery County Green Democrats, he is a member of the Montgomery County Democratic Forum.

Brower’s topic will be “CPR for the Earth: Conservation, Preservation, Restoration.” The talk is open to the public at no charge.

Known to many as the godfather of the environmental movement, Brower served from 1952 to 1969 as the first executive director of the Sierra Club. During that time the organization grew from 2,000 to 77,000 members and became one of the nation’s most influential voices for environmental protection. In 1969 he founded Friends of the Earth, which now operates in 53 countries.

Earth Island Institute, founded in 1982, works worldwide on issues of peace, social justice and environmental conservation. Brower currently is working for the creation of a National Biosphere Reserve System and for a National Land Service to replace the current Bureau of Land Management.

A noted climber and ski mountaineer, Brower is credited with 70 first ascents in Yosemite National Park and the High Sierras. As an editor and designer for the Sierra Club he was responsible for the acclaimed large- format books that include “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World” (1962), judged one of the 10 most beautiful books in the world.

His most recent book is “Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run,” co-written with Steve Chapple.

He has lectured around the world and received numerous honorary degrees, including from Maine’s Unity College in 1989.

The annual Muskie Environmental Lecture honors 1936 Bates graduate Edmund S. Muskie, who during his 22 years in the U.S. Senate sponsored landmark legislation to protect the environment.