Citizenship Lecture Series
Dennis Thompson
"Deliberative Democracy in Action: The Case of the Citizens Assembly"
Friday, Nov. 9, 2007
3:30 p.m.
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201
Co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science.
See a streaming video of this event. This streaming video requires RealPlayer. If you do not have RealPlayer, you can download it free.
Dennis Thompson is Professor of Government and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.
He is also a professor of public policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and founding Director of the University Center for Ethics and the Professions (now the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics). He has served as Associate Provost and Senior Adviser to the President of the University.
Thompson is the author with Amy Gutmann of Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, 2004), which explores the most widely debated conception of democracy in recent years -- the idea that citizens or their representatives owe each other mutually acceptable reasons for the laws they enact. By explaining what deliberative democracy is and why it is more defensible than its rivals, Thompson and Gutmann illuminate the theory and practice of justifying public policies in contemporary democracies. They also apply deliberative democracy to new practical problems such as bioethics, health care, truth commissions, educational policy, and decisions to declare war.
Thompson's other books include Restoring Responsibility: Ethics in Government, Business, and Healthcare; Just Elections: Creating a Fair Electoral Process in the United States; Democracy and Disagreement (with Amy Gutmann); The Democratic Citizen: Social Science and Democratic Theory in the 20th Century; John Stuart Mill and Representative Government; Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption; and Political Ethics and Public Office, which won the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer award for the best political science publication in the field of U.S. national policy in 1987.
His articles have appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Political Theory, and Ethics. Thompson's current teaching and research concentrate on democratic theory and political ethics.
|
