Alumnus donates funds to support lecture series

The College is pleased to announce the establishment of The Benjamin Center’s Gary King Visiting Lecturer in Applied Social Research series, a new annual event made possible by support from alumnus Gary King ’80 (Political Science), the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor and Director for the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. In 2010, he was elected by his peers as a member of the National Academy of Sciences for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. It is one of the highest honors in the scientific field.

“Gary is among the world’s leading applied social scientists and one of the College’s most distinguished alumni,” said Benjamin Center Director Gerald Benjamin. “We are most grateful, and delighted, that he has chosen to provide a forum at his alma mater for students, faculty and regional community members to learn of the power of well-conceived and executed social science research to inform and direct policy that deeply affects our daily lives.”

The Benjamin Center currently presents two to four conferences annually, bringing together community stakeholders and SUNY New Paltz faculty. The Center expects that series will build upon these conferences by featuring a nationally recognized thought leader whose work has already had an impact in his or her field.

“It is incredibly valuable in any community to have people come from different places with new ideas to offer new perspectives,” said King. “Collaborating with The Benjamin Center for this lecture series connects first rate social science with research making a real difference for people and society as a whole. It provides the College with the opportunity to have strong academic discussion while also potentially transforming policy.”

King has returned to the SUNY New Paltz campus several times since graduation to speak with students. His research is of national and international importance for democracy and governance; he has trained numerous students who are themselves now providing intellectual leadership in social science departments in universities around the world.

The first of the lectures in this series, a talk on “Voting Behavior and Punitive Policies” held on March 15, featured King’s former student, Ariel White, assistant professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

White studies voting and voting rights, race, ethnicity, immigration policy and the criminal justice system. She received her Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, where she was a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy (at Harvard’s Kennedy School) and a Radcliffe fellow. Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, and is forthcoming in Political Behavior and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.

Visit The Benjamin Center online for more information.