[Archived from February 20, 2009]
Professor Marc J. Hetherington of Vanderbilt University in Nashville has been selected to deliver the Naamani Memorial Lecture at the University of Louisville this year. The lecture will be presented in the Chao Auditorium of the Ekstrom Library on the U of L campus at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 26.
Professor Hether-ington’s lecture, “Au-thoritarianism, Jews, Arabs and American Political Behavior,” will examine the concept of “authoritarianism” in the realm of politics, and consider how that concept relates both to general views of Jews and Arabs in the United States and to the political behavior of Jewish Americans and Arab Americans.
“We have recently witnessed a growing polarization of worldviews” Hetherington observes, and he suggests that “differences in worldview are rooted in authoritarianism,” explaining that authoritarianism is “a venerable concept in the study of public opinion originally used to explain anti-Semitism and more recently to explain negative feelings about Muslims.”
Hetherington is Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for Graduate Education at Vanderbilt University. His book Authoritarianism and Polarization in America will be published shortly by the Cambridge University Press. He is also the author of Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism, published by the Princeton University Press. Professor Hetherington has been the recipient of several teaching awards at both Vanderbilt University and Bowdoin College.
The Naamani Memorial Lecture, named in memory of Professor Israel T. Naamani, a respected and beloved member of U of L’s Political Science Department who died in 1979, is free and open to the public. Limited on-street parking for the lecture will be available on Third Street near Ekstrom Library and paid parking will be available in the Speed Museum parking structure. For more information about the Naamani Lecture, contact Professor Lee Shai Weissbach in the U of L History Department, 852-3755 or by e-mail at weissbach@louisville.edu.
