The 2006 Goldstone Forum
presents
 |
Click here to go to the Bowling Alone Web site Click here to go to the Better Together Web site Click here to go to the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics web site for additional information |
Robert D. Putnam
Peter and Isabel Malkin
Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University
author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community
Speaking on
“Community Engagement in a Changing America”
Monday, February 6
4:30 p.m.
Logan Hall, Terrace Room
University of Pennsylvania
About Robert D. Putnam
Robert D. Putnam is the leading expert on social interaction
in the United States. He argues that civil society is breaking
down as Americans become more disconnected from their families,
neighbors, communities and the nation itself. He calls
for increasing social activism and promoting citizenship
as a way to reverse these trends. A former member of the
National Security Council, Putnam is the author or co-author
of eight books, including the best-selling Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community and more
recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community.
The decline of civic engagement in the United States over the past 30 years, which Putnam charted in Bowling Alone, has worried a number of politicians and commentators. As a result, his ideas have been the focus of seminars hosted by President Bill Clinton at Camp David and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street.
As part of his follow-up to the book, Putnam launched the Saguaro Seminars – a series of meetings held around the United States at which leaders and intellectuals considered how they might build bonds of civic trust among Americans and their communities. He is also the founder of The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, a program that attempts to bring together leading practitioners and thinkers to develop broad-scale, but actionable, ideas to fortify civic connectedness in America.
Putnam received his doctoral degree from Yale in 1970 and joined the University of Michigan faculty, becoming a full professor of political science in 1975. He moved to Harvard in 1979 as a professor of government and subsequently served as department chair from 1984 to 1988. In 1989, he was appointed dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Don K. Price Professor of Politics. He is now the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American politics, international relations, comparative politics and public policy.
About the Goldstone Forum
The Goldstone Forum was established by a generous gift from Steven F. Goldstone,
C’67, as part of the Steven Goldstone Fund for Philosophy, Politics and
Economics. This event is sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences and the
Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program at the University of Pennsylvania.