U. S. Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Tufts University Professor Russell Neuman will be the Visiting Laurence M. Lombard Lecturer and Professor, respectively, at the Kennedy School's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Neuman will be in residence during the forthcoming fall 1996 term. Simpson will join the School upon leaving the Senate in January of 1997.

"The Shorenstein Center is grateful for this abundance of riches," said Marvin Kalb, director of the Center. "Neuman is an outstanding scholar in the field of telecommunications, and Senator Simpson brings a wealth of rich legislative experience to his teaching assignment at Harvard."

Neuman is the Edward R. Murrow Professor of International Communications and director of the Murrow Center at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His current research focuses on the impact of advanced telecommunications on public policy, and the economics and policy of new media technologies. He is the author of several books, including The Gordian Knot: Political Gridlock on the Information Highway; Common Knowledge: News and the Construction of Political Meaning (with Marion Just and Ann Crigler); and The Telecommunications Revolution.

This fall, Neuman will teach a seminar on "Technologies of Freedom: New Media and Public Policy," which examines how the policy battles among powerful vested interests, fast changing technologies, and new media economics affect the public sector, the private sector, and the relationship between public and private institutions.

Senator Simpson, who is leaving the U.S. Senate after 30 years of public service, will teach a course this spring called Creating Legislation: Congress and the Press, This course will draw on his Wyoming Legislature and U.S. Senate experience, his former position as Republican Whip, his work as a lawyer in Cody, and his lively encounters with the media, the subject of his forthcoming book.

The Laurence M. Lombard Professorship was established by the family and friends of Laurence M. Lombard, a director of the Dow Jones Co. for 28 years, to help build a substantial body of knowledge concerning the interaction of press and politics and their influence on public policy.