Clark University’s Harrington Public Affairs Lecture Series will feature “Congress: Legislating in Polarizing Times,” a lecture by Sarah Binder, a political scientist with George Washington University and the Brookings Institution. The lecture will take place on Monday, Oct. 28 at 4:30 p.m. in Tilton Hall (Higgins University Center, second floor).
Professor Binder, an expert on Congress and legislative politics, studies the politics of the Senate filibuster, the causes and consequences of legislative gridlock, and the politics and practice of advice and consent for selecting federal judges.
She is the co-author, with Forrest Maltzman, of “Advice and Dissent: The Struggle to Shape the Federal Judiciary” (Brookings, 2009); author of “Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock” (Brookings, 2003) and “Minority Rights, Majority Rule: Partisanship and the Development of Congress” (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and co-author, with Steven S. Smith, of “Politics or Principle? Filibustering in the United States Senate” (Brookings, 1997). She is also co-editor of “The Legislative Branch” (Oxford University Press, 2005) and “The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions” (2006).
“Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock” was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize for the best book published on legislative politics in 2003. Her other work on congressional politics has appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science. Her current project focuses on Congress’s response to financial crisis, including a study of Congress’s relationship with the Federal Reserve.
Professor Binder earned a B.A. from Yale University and Ph.D. from University of Minnesota.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Political Science. It is free and open to the public. For more information, call 508-793-7155.
The Harrington Public Affairs Lecture Series is funded by the Francis A. Harrington Public Affairs Fund. Mr. Harrington was a Worcester native, civic leader, vice president and director of the Paul Revere Insurance Companies and a member of Clark University’s Board of Trustees. In 1963, Mr. Harrington gave a generous gift to Clark to establish a permanent endowment whose income is to be used for lectures, seminars, scholarships, fellowships and other programming in public affairs. The Political Science Department offers these lectures on a yearly basis.