Professor and founder of the Center for American Progress, John Podesta will lecture on “Think Tanks, Democracy, and Public Policy” on Thursday, September 23 at 7:00 p.m. in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons, located on the Scripps College campus. This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8326.
John Podesta is founder of the Center for American Progress and visiting professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. The Center for American Progress serves as a research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America. Podesta also served as Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton, in the President’s Cabinet, and as a Principal on the National Security Council. Podesta held a number of positions on Capitol Hill, including Counselor to Democratic Leader, Senator Thomas A. Daschle.
In addition, the Humanities Institute will offer a film screening of Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election in Balch Auditorium on the Scripps College Campus, on September 30, 2004 at 7:15 p.m. The screening will be preceded by a broadcast of the first presidential debate, beginning at 6:00 p.m.
Unprecedented is the riveting story about the battle for the presidency in Florida and the undermining of democracy in America. Filmmakers Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler examine modern America’s most controversial political contest: The election of George W. Bush. What emerges is a disturbing picture of an election marred by suspicious irregularities, electoral injustices, and sinister voter purges in a state governed by the winning candidate’s brother.
Podesta’s lecture and the screening of Unprecedented are part of the Scripps College Humanities Institute’s fall 2004 program, “The Production of Knowledge.” The program will explore the connections among knowledge, information, and power. The approach will be interdisciplinary and wide-ranging, including such topics as the way information is created and used in policy-making and the formation of political culture; the role of think tanks; and relationships among the academy, public policy and social movements.
For a full schedule of events related to the fall 2004 Program, contact the Scripps College Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8326.