Last modified: Thursday, October 17, 2002
Visiting scholar to discuss challenges facing U.S. electoral process
Dennis Thompson, the Alfred North Whitehead professor of political philosophy and director of the University Center for Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University, will speak at Indiana University Bloomington about challenges facing America's electoral process.
Thompson, author of the recent book, Just Elections: Creating a Fair Electoral Process in the United States, will speak on Oct. 31 at 4 p.m. in Woodburn Hall, Room 004. His topic will be "Election Time: Implications for Redistricting, Voting and Fundraising."
The lecture is jointly sponsored by the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, the Center for the Study of American Politics, the Center for the Study of Democracy and the Center for the Study of Participation and Citizenship.
A founding member of the executive committee of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, headquartered in Bloomington, Thompson has served as a consultant to the Joint Ethics Committee of the South African Parliament, the American Medical Association, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In 1990-91, Thompson was a consultant to the special counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee in the investigation of the "Keating Five" savings and loan scandal.
Thompson's previous books include Democracy and Disagreement (written with Amy Gutmann, Harvard University Press, 1996) and Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption (The Brookings Institution, 1995), which was designated as one of the best academic books of 1995 by Choice magazine. An earlier book, Political Ethics and Public Office (Harvard University Press, 1990), won the American Political Science Association's award for the best political science publication in the field of U.S. national policy in 1987.
Thompson and Amy Gutmann co-edited a casebook, Ethics and Politics, that is now in its third edition. In addition, he has published articles on the ethics of business, law, medicine and education in journals in these fields.
