Today: Harvard Professor Robert Putnam to Moderate Tercentennial Public Forum On the Role of Volunteerism

In continuing celebration of Yale’s Tercentennial, the Yale Club of New Haven, Dwight Hall at Yale and the Yale Tercentennial Office will sponsor a Democratic Vistas Public Forum titled “Bowling Together? The Changing Role of Volunteers and the Character of American Democracy.” It will be held March 8 at 1:00 p.m. at Luce Hall, Room 101, 43 Hillhouse Ave.

The forum will be moderated by Robert Putnam, professor of government at Harvard and best-selling author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”

Putnam will talk about changes in the type and quantity of volunteerism over the past 50 years in the context of his larger argument about the decline in civic engagement.

He will be followed by a panel, moderated by former Yale Divinity School faculty member Peter Hall, now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, that will include two current Yale students, child advocate Shelley Geballe, an Amistad Academy teacher, and former LEAP administrator Dreama Brown.

The panel will engage in a discussion with Putnam and the audience about the implications of his argument for community involvement by Yale students and citizens of Greater New Haven.