Morris Fiorina speaks on "The 2008 Elections and the Myth of the Culture War"

Video of Lecture

A visiting professor who is an expert in elections will give his analysis of the 2008 elections just one week after America votes.

Morris Fiorina, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, speaks on “The 2008 Elections and the Myth of the Culture War” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 11 at the Alumni Lounge, Quadrangle Building, Saint John’s University. His presentation is free and open to the public.

Fiorina’s current research focuses on elections and public opinion with particular attention to the quality of representation – how well the positions of elected officials reflect the preferences of the public.

The title of his presentation plays off the title of a book he wrote in 2004, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (with Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope). The book combines polling data with a compelling narrative to debunk commonly-believed myths about American politics – particularly the claim that Americans are deeply divided in their fundamental political views.

“This is quite simply the most interesting – and the most serious – work out there on contemporary American political culture,” said columnist Niall Ferguson of the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper. “Fiorina, Abrams and Pope brilliantly demolish the conventional wisdom that we have become ‘two nations,’ one Red and one Blue.”

Fiorina is working on his next book, Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in the United States (with Abrams), which will appear in 2009.

He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. He has served on the editorial boards of more than a dozen journals on political science, law, political economy and public policy. His 1987 book, The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence, coauthored with Bruce Cain and John Ferejohn, won the 1988 Richard F. Fenno Prize.

The event is sponsored by The Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. The center seeks to engage the campus and wider community in debate and discourse regarding public policy and public affairs. More information about the center can be found at www.mccarthycenter.org.