With the 2012 Presidential elections rapidly approaching,
the political landscape is set for a showdown between President Obama and a
Republican contender. The Republican Party, however, is currently one of
transition, division, and doubt. Harvard Government and Sociology professor
Theda Skocpol has studied and will speak to the emergence of the Tea Party and
the new Republican Conservatism.
Ever since CNBC commentator Rick Santelli lambasted the
Obama Administration in 2009 and called for “Tea Party” protests, America has
seen thousands of conservative activists take to the streets. With votes and
monetary efforts, their movement prompted many right-wing Republican electoral
victories in 2010. Harvard’s Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson studied this
movement and have written a nuanced portrait of the Tea Party.
Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of
Government and Sociology at Harvard University. At Harvard, she has served as
Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (2005-2007) and as Director of
the Center for American Political Studies (2000-2006). In 1996, Skocpol served as President of
the Social Science History Association and, in 2002-2003, she served as
President of the American Political Science Association. Skocpol has also been
elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. Her work
covers a broad spectrum of topics including both comparative politics (States and Social Revolutions, 1979) and
American politics (Protecting Soldiers
and Mothers, 1992). Her books
and articles have been widely cited in political science literature and have
won numerous awards. Skocpol's research focuses on U.S. social policy and civic
engagement in American democracy. Her most recent books are Health Care Reform and American Politics,
2010 (with Lawrence R. Jacobs), Reaching
for a New Deal: Ambitious Governance, Economic Meltdown, and Polarized Politics
in Obama’s First Two Years, 2011 (co-edited with Lawrence R. Jacobs), and The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican
Conservatism, 2011 (with Vanessa Williamson).
Please join us for the Class of 1930 Fellow Lecture by Professor
Theda Skocpol, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism," at Rockefeller 003 at 4:30 pm, May 1, 2012.
