LEWISTON, Maine -- The presidency of Richard M. Nixon, an important chapter in recent American history, will be the focus of a conference for Maine teachers on Friday (Sept. 27) at Bates CollegeÕs Edmund S. Muskie Archives.

The conference, sponsored by the Maine Collaborative for Education in the Arts and Humanities, begins at 9 a.m.

Muskie Archives director Christopher M. Beam, who worked on the Nixon White House Tapes for four years while on the staff of the National Archives, is the conferenceÕs lead scholar. He will discuss the Nixon White House taping system and its role in the Watergate scandal.

Other conference faculty will be James G. Richter, associate professor of political science at Bates, who will speak on NixonÕs foreign policy; and Gregory Gallant, director of the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, who will discuss the former presidentÕs domestic policy.

The conference on the Nixon presidency is the second program the Maine Collaborative has offered in partnership with the Muskie Archives. The first was "Why Vietnam? The U.S. Path Toward Intervention, 1945- 1965," presented last spring.