Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and third party presidential candidate in 2000, will give a lecture, "Politics and the Environment: Winners and Losers," on Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. in the Hamilton College Chapel. His lecture is part of the Levitt Public Affairs Center's series "The Environment: Public Policy and Social Responsibility."
Nader has been active in the political arena, practicing what he calls "professional citizenship," since 1963, when he moved to Washington, D.C., and took a job in the U.S. Department of Labor under Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1965, he published his best selling book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, contributing to the passage of 1966 laws forcing the auto industry to make their cars safer. Since then, Nader has been involved in the creation of many consumer justice and advocacy groups, such as Public Citizen, Congress Watch, The Health Research Group, The Center for the Study of Responsive Law, and Democracy Rising, as well as authoring many books. His work has also inspired the creation of Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) around the country, particularly at colleges. In the environmental arena, Nader was instrumental in the foundation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and was involved in the passage of laws such as the Safe Water Drinking Act and the Air and Water Pollution Control Acts. In the 2000 Presidential election, Nader ran on the Green Party ticket and became one of the most successful third party candidates in history, later writing a book on his campaign called Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender.
Today, Ralph Nader lectures on the convergence of government and corporate power and how it affects developing nations, labor, and the environment. His lecture at Hamilton will be the first in the spring semester for the Levitt Public Affairs Center's series on environmental responsibility. In the fall, the Levitt Center welcomed speakers such as Vandana Shiva, Dallas Burtraw, David Orr, and Christopher Foreman to lecture on the topic.
