ITHACA, N.Y. -- Harvard University professor of government Nancy Rosenblum, who researches U.S. political parties, will deliver Cornell University Law School's Robert S. Stevens Lecture Tuesday, March 26, at the Law School.

Rosenblum's talk, "Party ID? Anti-Extremism, Anti-Partisanship, Anti-Politics," will take place in the Stein Mancuso Amphitheater of Myron Taylor Hall. It is free and open to the public. No tickets are needed to attend.

"Political parties have always been under attack, but today we have particularly virulent anti-partisanship and talk among activists and academics of the possibility of democracy without parties," said Rosenblum. "At the same time that American parties are described as centrist and amorphous, lacking real political identity, the favorite term of political abuse is 'extremist.' I argue that extremism is not just political rhetoric but rooted in the U.S. democratic theory of parties."

Rosenblum's fields of study are the history of modern political thought, contemporary political theory and constitutional law. She currently is working on a theoretical study of political parties. She earned a Ph.D. at Harvard in 1973 and joined Harvard's government department in January 2001. She previously was the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor at Brown University, where she taught political science and founded and directed the Steven Robert Initiative for the Study of Values.

Rosenblum is the author of Membership and Morals , a study of freedom of association in the United States (Princeton University Press, 1998), Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith , a compilation of essays on religious accommodation in democracies (Princeton University Press, 2000) and, with Martha Minow, Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law and Repair (Princeton University Press, forthcoming). She edited, with Robert Post, and contributed to Civil Society and Government (Princeton University Press, 2001). From 1996 to 1998, she served on the National Commission on Civic Values, chaired by Sen. Sam Nunn and William Bennett.

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