January 4, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
Photos and audio of this event
AMHERST, Mass.—David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, and E. J. Dionne Jr., columnist for The Washington Post, will participate in a discussion titled “What Do We Mean by ‘America?’ Liberalism, Conservatism and the Future of the Culture Wars” at a forum at Amherst College on Monday, Jan. 21. The event, which will take place on campus at 4 p.m. in Converse Hall’s Cole Assembly Room, is part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) and is free and open to the public.
Brooks has written a column for the Op-Ed page of the Times since September 2003. He has served as a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, contributing editor at both Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly and op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal, among other positions. At present, he is a commentator on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer and frequently appears as an analyst on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and the Diane Rehm Show. He is also the author of Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000) and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense (2004) and editor of the anthology Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing (1996).
Dionne joined the Post in 1990 as a reporter covering national politics. He began his op-ed column with the paper three years later, and it was syndicated in 1996. Also a 14-year veteran with the Times, he has been a frequent commentator on politics for NPR, CNN and NBC’s Meet the Press. His first book, Why Americans Hate Politics (1991), won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee. Another book, They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate The Next Political Era, was published in 1996.
The ACCS explores pressing societal concerns in depth and features renowned speakers taking divergent positions. Each colloquium includes two days of lectures with the speakers and culminates in an open forum that is free to the general public. It is sponsored by the Office of the President at Amherst College.
###