Renowned political scientist to speak

Gary C. Jacobson, renowned political scientist, will visit Virginia Tech to give a public lecture as the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, on "Partisan Polarization and the 2004 Elections."

He will speak at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 29, in Torgersen 2150. The lecture will include an analysis of the forces that determined the results of the presidential and congressional elections, and what the results portend for national politics during the coming administration.

Gary C. Jacobson is a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, where he has taught since 1979. He received his A.B. from Stanford in 1966 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1972. He specializes in the study of U.S. elections, parties, interest groups, and Congress. He is the author of Money in Congressional Elections, The Politics of Congressional Elections, The Electoral Origins of Divided Government, and co-author of Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections, and The Logic of American Politics. His current research focuses on partisan polarization in American politics.

Jacobson has served on the Board of Overseers of National Election Studies (1985-93), the Council of the American Political Science Association (1993-94), the APSA's Committee on Research Support, as Treasurer of the APSA (1996-97) and as chair of the APSA's Elections Review Committee (2001-2002). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The lecture is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, the College of Science, University Libraries, and the Departments of Communication, History, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Political Science.