Dr. Dennis Potthoff
UNK Department of Teacher Education, 308.865.8814
“American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us” is the topic of the 17th Annual Governors Lecture in the Humanities being presented at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
Dr. Robert Putnam, Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, will give the presentation, which draws from his 2010 book of the same title. He co-authored the book with David Campbell of the University of Notre Dame.
Dr. Putnam’s presentation is being simulcast at the UNK Communications Center, Room 101, and to other locations across the state from the Lied Center in Lincoln. The simulcast is free and open to the public. Community conversations will take place after the simulcast.
“Unique among nations, America is deeply religious, religiously diverse and remarkably tolerant,” Dr. Putnam said. “But in recent decades, the nation’s religious landscape has been reshaped.” Dr. Putnam has written more than a dozen books, including “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” and “Making Democracy Work.”
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the British Academy, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Putnam is also a past president of the American Political Science Association.
The lecture, the first in the 2012-2013 E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues series addressing religion, rights and politics, is presented by the Nebraska Humanities Council and co-sponsored by the E.N. Thompson Forum.
Two additional lectures in the series will be simulcast on the UNK campus in November and February. The two include, “The Death Penalty: Justice, Retribution and Dollars,” co-presented by J. Kirk Brown, Nebraska Solicitor General, and Michal Radelet, professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, on Wednesday, Nov. 28; and “True Islam: Human Rights, Faith and Women,” presented by Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi on Tuesday, Feb. 26.
