Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. He has served as chairman of Harvard's Department of Government, Director of the Center for International Affairs, and Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. Raised in a small town in the Midwest and educated at Swarthmore, Oxford, and Yale, he has written more than thirty scholarly articles and a dozen books, translated into seventeen languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness. He founded the Saguaro Seminar, bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners from academia, the arts, clergy, business and the top leaders and policymakers of both major political parties to develop actionable ideas for civic renewal and to fortify the nation's civic connectedness. He is now studying the challenges of building community in an increasingly diverse society. Dr. Putnam?s presentation is co-sponsored by the Peterborough Historical Society.
