James Q. Wilson Will Deliver Edwin L. Godkin Lecture Series

James Q. Wilson, the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at UCLA, will deliver this year's Edwin L. Godkin Lecture Series, entitled "It's Not My Fault: Law, Science, and Personal Responsibility."

In a telephone interview, Wilson stated, "In the aftermath of several prominent criminal trials, some observers have criticized American justice for being too vulnerable to an 'abuse excuse.' I hope to examine that possibility in a way that shifts the grounds of this important debate."

He will deliver the first lecture, "Self-Control," on Monday, April 15, at 8 p.m. in the Kennedy School of Government's ARCO Forum of Public Affairs. The second lecture, "Self-Defense," and the third lecture, "Law and Responsibility," will be delivered on April 16 and 17, respectively, at 7 p.m. in Starr Auditorium at the Kennedy School. All three lectures are open to the public.

James Q. Wilson has been the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at UCLA since 1985. Before that, he was the Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard for 26 years. He has authored or coauthored 13 books, including American Government (1995), On Character (1995), The Moral Sense (1993), Bureaucracy (1989), Crime and Human Nature (1985), Thinking about Crime (1985), Political Organizations (1973), and Varieties of Police Behavior (1966).

He has, in addition, edited or contributed to books on urban problems and government regulation of business, including From Children to Citizens: Families, Schools and Delinquency Prevention, Understanding and Controlling Crime, and Drugs and Crime.

Educated at the University of Redlands (A.B., 1952) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1959), he has received honorary degrees from six universities.

The Godkin Lectureship was founded in 1903 by friends of Edwin Lawrence Godkin (1831-1902), editor of The Nation and the New York Evening Post. Lecturers generally speak on the "Essentials of Free Government and the Duties of the Citizen."

Currently administered by the Dean of the Kennedy School, the first Godkin Lecture was delivered by Lord James Bryce in 1904. Subsequent lecturers have included Walter Lippmann (1933), Robert Moses (1938), Harold Stassen (1945), Adlai Stevenson (1953), Chester Bowles (1955), Nelson Rockefeller (1961), McGeorge Bundy (1967), John Gardner (1968), Erik Erikson (1972), George Will (1981), Alice Rivlin (1984), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1985), Paul Samuelson (1986), William Julius Wilson (1988), C. Everett Koop (1989), Derek C. Bok (1992), and Peter F. Drucker (1994).

For further information on the lecture series, contact Amy Dondero at 496-5575.