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Monica Lewinsky is coming to Rhode Island.

The United Way of Rhode Island is bringing in Lewinsky to be the keynote speaker at its annual Women United “Power of Women” event March 12 at Bally’s Twin River in Lincoln.

The theme of the event is owning your story, rising from adversity, and using your voice to create change.

Lewinsky is still best known for an affair with President Bill Clinton that became public in the late 1990s, when she was 22 years old and a White House intern. The scandal quickly eclipsed everything else about her, reducing a young woman at the very beginning of her adult life to a symbol, a punchline, and a political weapon.

In recent years Lewinsky has reemerged in public life on her own terms. She’s done work as an anti-bulling advocate and launched a podcast called “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.”

Her return to public life makes it worth revisiting how the scandal was understood in real time, particularly here in Rhode Island.

A Brown University poll in September 1998 found 69 percent of Rhode Island voters believed Clinton misled the general public about the affair, 69 percent believed he engaged in conduct unbecoming of a president, and 62 percent believed he lied to a grand jury.

But the same survey found that only 31 percent thought Clinton should resign and 17 percent thought he should be impeached. Instead, 63 percent of Rhode Island voters thought Clinton should be censured or reprimanded by Congress.

Clinton was impeached by the US House of Representatives in December 1998, but the Senate later acquitted him, allowing him to serve out the remainder of his presidency.