September 05, 2017
Media Advisory – Morton-Kenney Public Affairs Lecture
Southern Illinois University Carbondale on Wednesday, Sept. 6, will host political scientist Katherine Cramer, who will discuss how people view politics and their role in the process.
Cramer will present “The Politics of Resentment in the Contemporary United States” at 7 p.m. in Student Center Ballroom B. Cramer’s presentation is part of The Morton-Kenney Public Affairs Lecture Series presented by the Department of Political Science and the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. Reporters, photographers and news crews are welcome to cover the lecture.
The event is free and the public is invited.
Cramer is the director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service and a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, Vox.com, USA Today, and the Guardian. Her recent book, “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker,” focused on the resentment of people in rural areas of Wisconsin toward the state’s major metropolitan areas of Milwaukee and Madison between 2007 and 2012, through the Great Recession and the presidency of Barack Obama.
“Cramer’s research found that many rural Wisconsin’s residents perceived that they were not getting their fair share of the state’s resources compared to those living in the state’s urban areas, a sentiment that has been historically shared by many Illinois residents,” Jak Tichenor, interim director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, said. “There are many parallels between Cramer’s findings and our own political fault lines here in the Prairie State, so we thought she’d be a good fit for our audience.”
Cramer is the 42nd lecturer in the series that began in 1995. The Morton-Kenney lecture series brings speakers to campus in the spring and fall of each year. The late Jerome Mileur, originally from Murphysboro, was a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, retiring in 2004 after a 37-year teaching career there. Mileur established the series in 1995 in honor of two of his political science professors -- Ward Morton and David Kenney -- who inspired him as a student. Mileur earned his bachelor’s degree in speech communication in 1955, and a doctorate in government in 1971, both from SIU Carbondale.