"People, Politics, and the Pulpit" to be subject of WWS Lecture

<Posted 10/01/2001 17:00>

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in Washington, DC, will present a public lecture titled "The People, Politics, and the Pulpit," on Tuesday, October 9, 2001 at 4:30 p.m., Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall, on the Princeton campus.

Kohut has been involved in polling and public opinion for more than 20 years. Formerly the president of the Gallup organization, he founded the Princeton Survey Research Associates, a private polling and market research firm based in Princeton, NJ.

From 1990 to 1992 he served as the survey director and in 1993 was named director of the Times Mirror Center, the forerunner to the Pew Research Center. Kohut is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. He is also a columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review and America Online News.

His recent writings have reflected on public attitudes toward the media and the perception of religion in government. He argues that, with the increased blurring of the church-state divide, Americans are looking toward the media to objectively cover the sensitive nature of this topic without journalists falling prey to their own personal religious biases.

The lecture is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs' Office of External Affairs.