The columnist visits for a talk titled "Our Divided Political Heart: Barack Obama, the Tea Party, and the Battle for the American Idea."
Thursday, April 5
E.J. Dionne Jr., Our Divided Political Heart: Barack Obama, the Tea Party, and the Battle for the American Idea
Whitley Auditorium, 6:30 p.m.
The James P. Elder Lecture
What is tearing our nation apart? Why is there so much brooding about American decline? What can be done to restore the voters’ sense of confidence? E.J. Dionne delivers reasoned analysis in his latest book and is also followed by a wide circle of policy-makers through syndicated Washington Post columns and his appearances as a commentator for NPR, ABC and NBC.
From his Washington Post bio: “E.J. Dionne writes about politics in a twice-weekly column and on the PostPartisan blog. He is also a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University and a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, ABC’s “This Week” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Before joining The Post in 1990 as a political reporter, Dionne spent 14 years at the New York Times, where he covered politics and reported from Albany, Washington, Paris, Rome and Beirut. He is the author of four books.”
The James P. Elder Lecture is Elon’s first endowed lecture series devoted to the exploration of critical scholarship and its impact in the public forum.
Elder graduated from Elon in 1960. He founded the Liberal Arts Forum as an undergraduate in 1958, and went on to serve on the history faculty at Elon from 1963 to 1973. As faculty advisor to the Liberal Arts Forum, he helped bring more than 150 distinguished lecturers from major universities to the Elon campus. He was instrumental in the creation of Elon’s study abroad program. Five times during his tenure, Elon students voted him as the college’s Outstanding Professor.