Yale political scientist to speak at UW–Madison

The Yale political scientist who authored a “public option” plan for national health care will visit the University of Wisconsin–Madison to deliver a Hilldale Lecture in the Social Studies on American politics and the middle class.

Jacob Hacker will speak at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20, in the main floor forum at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, 330 N. Orchard St.

His lecture “Has American Politics Betrayed the Middle Class?” will explore the effects of the economic crisis and offer solutions for building a democracy that serves the interest of more Americans.

Hacker, Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale, is a resident fellow of the Center for the Study of American Politics and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale, as well as a professor in the Yale Law School. He is author of the recent book “Winner-Take-All-Politics” with Paul Pierson, which documents a widening gap in income distribution in the U.S.

He also wrote a 2007 proposal for universal health care, which included a public option model and became the template for some 2008 presidential candidates’ platforms.

The Hilldale Lecture Series, which began in 1973 and is administered by the Office of the Secretary of the Faculty, is sponsored by the faculty’s four divisional committees — Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Studies — and funded by the university’s Hilldale Fund.

Other sponsors include UW–Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications and its Center for Communication and Democracy, the La Follette School of Public Affairs, as well as the departments of Community and Environmental Sociology, Gender and Women’s Studies, Political Science, Sociology, the Program in Civil Society and Community Leadership of Interdisciplinary Studies.

All lectures are free and open to the public.

For more information, visit http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/lectures/hilldale/index.htm.