George Will to give Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture, hold Q&A TODAY

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will will discuss the national political scene and what the future holds for American society this Thursday as part of the Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture Series. The lecture is at 6:30 p.m. in McCrary Theatre, and a Q&A session will be at 4 p.m. in Whitley Auditorium. Details...

Will, considered one of the nation’s foremost conservative voices, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977.

Will began writing a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post in 1974. His syndicated work now appears in hundreds of newspapers across the United States and Europe.  In 1976, he became a contributing editor for Newsweek, where he continues to write a biweekly column for the magazine. Will also serves as a news analyst for ABC and appears on This Week.

An avid baseball fan, Will often talks about the sport in his columns, and he penned two books on the game: Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball and Bunts: Pete Rose, Curt Flood, Camden Yards and Other Reflections on Baseball.

Will has published many other works, including seven collections of his newspaper columns such as The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts, The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions, The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986 and With a Happy Eye But … America and the World 1997-2002. Other works include Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does, The New Season: A Spectator’s Guide to the 1988 Election and Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy.

Will was born in Champaign, Illinois. He attended Trinity College, University of Oxford and Princeton University. Before becoming a journalist, Will taught political philosophy at James Madison College, Michigan State University, and the University of Toronto. He has also taught at Harvard University.

The Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture Series, which brings some of the
nation’s most accomplished writers and journalists to campus, is
endowed by James Baird and his wife, Jane, of Burlington, N.C. The
Pulitzer is the nation’s most prestigious award in journalism and the
liberal arts.

Tickets:
All tickets for Will’s lecture have been distributed. In keeping with the usual practice, on Thursday, the day of the lecture, numbered “holding tickets” will be distributed to students, faculty and staff only beginning at 5:30 p.m. one hour before the lecture. Those with “holding tickets” may be admitted into Yeager Recital Hall where they will view Will’s lecture on large screen, or be able to take available seats in McCrary five minutes before the lecture begins. The closed circuit broadcast in Yeager will not be available on the Elon TV network.

Question and Answer in Whitley:
At 4 p.m. on Thursday there will be a question & answer session with George Will in Whitley Auditorium. Admission to the Q & A will be limited to Elon students, faculty and staff. Tickets are not required. Glenn Scott, assistant professor of communications, will moderate and members of the audience will be able to ask Will about his views on current issues, journalism or his books on professional baseball.