BUIES CREEK – Thomas E. Patterson, a renowned professor of government at Harvard University, will reflect on the elections of 2012 at Campbell University on Wednesday, Jan. 23, as part of the Department of History, Criminal Justice and Political Science’s Barden Forum Lecture.
Patterson’s talk — titled “The Elections of 2012: Reflections & Prospects” — will begin at 7:30 p.m. and be held in the Harris Teeter Auditorium in the Maddox Hall Pharmacy Building.
Patterson is the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His most recent book, “The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty (2003),” looked at the causes and consequences of electoral participation. His earlier book on the political role of the media, “Out of Order (1994),” received the American Political Science Association’s Graber Award as the best book of the decade in political communication.
His first book, “The Unseeing Eye (1976),” was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books on public opinion in the past half century. He’s also the author of “The Mass Media Election (1980)” and two general U.S. government texts: “The American Democracy” and “We the People.” His articles have appeared in Political Communication, Journal of Communication and other academic journals, as well as in the popular press. His research has been funded by the Ford, Markle, Smith-Richardson, Pew, Knight, Carnegie and the National Science foundations.
Patterson received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1971.