ITHACA, N.Y. -- David A. Hollinger, a professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley, will give a lecture titled "The Will to Descend: Culture, Color and Genealogy" at Cornell University on Monday, April 28, at 4:30 p.m. in the Bethe Room, 700 Clark Hall.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will focus on current debates over the relation of culture to ethnoracial classifications and is presented as the 1996--97 Nordlander Lecture in Science and Public Policy, sponsored by Cornell's Department of Science and Technology Studies.

Hollinger has written two recent books on the subjects of ethnic and racial identification and classification in America. Science, Jews and Secular Culture (Princeton University Press, 1996) addresses the coming of Jewish intellectuals into American academic life during the middle decades of the 20th century. His previous book, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (1995, Basic Books), a historical and critical discussion of multiculturalism, has won praise from several philosophers and social scientists and has been described by historian Philip Gleason as "the most probing exploration of multiculturalism" yet to appear. He also contributed to a special issue of Representations, a major humanities journal, that addresses California's struggles over affirmative action.

Hollinger has been credited with coining the term "ethnoracial pentagon," which refers to the five-part demographic structure within which each American is now routinely classified: African-American, Asian-American, European-American, Latino and Native American. This "pentagon," Hollinger believes, is built on a foundation of color categories -- black, yellow, white, brown and red -- that are highly relevant to an understanding of racism but are of limited utility as a map of culture. In Postethnic America Hollinger laments the use of the ethnoracial pentagon for purposes of cultural reform and calls for a sharper separation of multiculturalism from anti-discrimination remedies, an argument he will make in his Cornell lecture as well.

Before moving to Berkeley in 1992, Hollinger taught at the University of Michigan and at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and has just been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

"David Hollinger has a remarkable ability to connect issues in the history of science with broader trends in American intellectual and cultural history," said Sheila Jasanoff, chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies. "He brings enviable clarity to some of the most vexed and complicated questions about the wellsprings of American identity."

The Nordlander Lecture Series was established in memory of J. Eric Nordlander (A.B. 1956), a distinguished scientist and educator who died in 1986. Previous Nordlander Lecturers have included physicist and science educator Philip Morrison, political journalist Daniel Schorr and historian David Holloway. In keeping with the Nordlander family's wishes, the visiting lecturer not only presents a public lecture to the Cornell community but also interacts with students and faculty in more informal settings.