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NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR TO GIVE ANNUAL JEFFERSON LECTURE AT WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY Postman is the author of 20 books, including "Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future" (Vintage, 2000). In that book, he revisits scholars of the Enlightenment, including Thomas Jefferson, and discusses how their then-radical thinking about inductive science, religious and political freedom, popular education, rational commerce, the nation-state, progress, and happiness, should be embraced anew. The recipient of many awards recognizing excellence in teaching, including the George Orwell Award for Clarity in Language, Postman has been published more than 200 times in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Harper's, and Time. He has lectured all over the world including a keynote address at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Postman has served as the Lawrence Lombard Visiting Professor of the Press and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The Abram Kartch/Thomas Jefferson Lecture Series began in 1985 after Abram Kartch, a retired Paterson businessman and Jefferson scholar, provided William Paterson with an endowment to establish and continue the series. Designed to provoke discussion about the relationship of Jefferson's words and thoughts to modern society, the series has presented lectures by many of the country's leading Jefferson scholars, including Henry Steele Commager, James B. Shenton, Jan Lewis and Pauline Maier. Kartch, who in later years resided in Wayne, died in 1997 at age 93. An essay contest for high school and college students will be conducted by the University in connection with the lecture. Certificates and monetary prizes will be awarded to students who write the two best essays on the theme developed in Postman's lecture. Contest judges include Richard Kearney, William Paterson University Library; Wartyna Davis, William Paterson assistant professor of political science, and Suzanne Bowles, William Paterson assistant professor of history. Essays must be postmarked no later than
May 21, 2001, and sent to Dr. Evelyn Gonzalez, professor of
history, William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey 07470.
For additional information about the contest, contact Gonzalez
at 973-720-2145.
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