ITHACA, N.Y. -- Benjamin R. Barber, author of the book Jihad vs. McWorld , will examine international terrorism in the second annual Polson Lecture, "Globalizing Markets? Globalizing Terror? Or Globalizing Democracy?" at Cornell University on Nov. 1. The lecture will be at 3 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall.

Barber will examine how terrorism affects the United States and how "democracy rather than terrorism may become the principal victim of the battle currently being waged." His lecture, which is free and open to the public, is presented by Cornell's Polson Institute for Global Development.

Barber is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and Wilson H. Elkins Professor at the Maryland School of Public Affairs and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland.

In his new introduction to Jihad vs. McWorld , Barber writes: "In bringing down the twin towers of the World Trade Center and destroying a section of the Pentagon with diabolically contrived human bombs, Jihadic warriors reversed the momentum in the struggle between Jihad and McWorld, writing a new page in an ongoing story."

Barber's book examines the culture clash and tension arising between McWorld (which he defines as "aggressive economic and cultural globalization") and jihad (which he defines not as Islam but as "militant fundamentalism"). He argues that both "Jihad and McWorld undermine the sovereignty of a nation-state, dismantling the democratic institutions that have been their finest achievement without discovering ways to extend democracy either downward to the subnational religious and ethnic entities that now lay claim to people's loyalty or upward to the international sector in which McWorld's pop culture and commercial markets operate without sovereign constraints."

Barber does not believe that America is solely responsible for creating McWorld. But, he says, "when America finally turns from its mythic independence and acknowledges the world of interdependence, it will face an irony it helped create: The international institutions who wish to make independence a tool of democracy and comity are far and few between." He writes, "McWorld is everywhere … but Nike and McDonalds and Coke and MTV can contribute nothing to the search for democratic alternatives to criminal terrorism; instead, these corporations sometimes inadvertently contribute to the causes of terrorism." That is, he says, the "melancholy dialectic of Jihad vs. McWorld" at the heart of his book.

Barber's other books include Strong Democracy (1984) and the novel Marriage Voices (1981). His latest book, published in 2001, is The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House . He holds both a doctorate and a master's degree from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree and an honorary doctorate from Grinnell College in Iowa. Barber's honors include Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships and the Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Berlin. He has held the chair of American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études in Paris, and in 2001 he was awarded the Palmes Académiques, the French government's highest honor for academic achievement.

The Polson Institute was established in 2001 within the Department of Rural Sociology in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences as a center for research and education on social change and development throughout the world. The institute, which promotes theoretical and applied research activities related to worldwide development, was named for Robert Polson, the late Cornell professor of rural sociology, and his wife, the late Ruth Polson, Cornell B.S. '42, Ph.D. '51.

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EDITORS: You and your reporters are invited to attend this lecture. For electronic media who may require a mult-box, contact Blaine Friedlander of the Cornell News Service as soon as possible at (607) 255-3290.