With the first round of the French presidential elections being held on April 22, the field of ten candidates has been whittled down to two, incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande, who will face each other in a runoff election on May 6. In advance of the May 6 election, a panel discussion will be held at the Woodrow Wilson School on Tuesday, May 1, 2012, at 4:30 p.m., in Bowl 016, Robertson Hall. The discussion is cosponsored by the European Union Program, the Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA), the Center for French Studies, as well as the Woodrow Wilson School.

Panelists will include:

David Bell, the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions and professor of history at Princeton University.  A historian of early modern France, Bell is notably the author of “The Cult of the Nation in France” (Harvard University Press, 2001) and is a frequent contributor to The New Republic and several other magazines;

Angèle Christin, a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology at Princeton and at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. Trained in sociology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, her primary interests are in comparative approaches of the media in the digital age. Her dissertation, “Breaking the News? Online Journalism in the United States and France,” explores the transformations of the fourth estate on both sides of the Atlantic;

Sophie Meunier, research scholar and lecturer in public and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School and co-director of the European Union Program at Princeton University.  Meunier has published widely on issues of Europe and globalizations, including “The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization,” and contributes frequently to the French and American media; and

Ezra Suleiman, the IBM Professor of International Studies in the Department of Politics at Princeton University and director of the Center for French Studies. A specialist on European politics Mr. Suleiman has written more than ten books about French and European politics, as well as books on policy-making and democratic governance. His most recent books are “Schizophrenie Française” (Grasset) and “Dismantling Democratic States” (Princeton University Press).

Meunier will also moderate the talk.

The event will be archived online for later viewing on the Woodrow Wilson School’s Webmedia site – http://wws.princeton.edu/webmedia.