The Roper Center’s Public Opinion Speaker Series promotes scholarship, dialogue and community engagement in the field of public opinion research. Although the series is geared toward faculty and students in political, economic and social disciplines, the topics of these seminars also hold a broader appeal for anyone interested in research innovation and the constantly evolving world of public opinion.
Roper Center Speaker Series
2022-2023 Speakers
Upcoming events for the 2022-2023 school year.
Shana Kushner Gadarian
Professor and Chair, Political Science Department
Syracuse University
April 27th, 2023, 10 AM EST
The seminar was held in person at 401 Physical Sciences Building on the main Cornell Ithaca campus. Light refreshments were served.
This Roper Center Speaker Series event is presented in conjunction with the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.
About Pandemic Politics, by Shana Kushner Gadarian, Sara Wallace Goodman, and Thomas B. Pepinsky:
"COVID-19 has killed more people than any war or public health crisis in American history, but the scale and grim human toll of the pandemic were not inevitable. Pandemic Politics examines how Donald Trump politicized COVID-19, shedding new light on how his administration tied the pandemic to the president’s political fate in an election year and chose partisanship over public health, with disastrous consequences for all of us.
Health is not an inherently polarizing issue, but the Trump administration’s partisan response to COVID-19 led ordinary citizens to prioritize what was good for their “team” rather than what was good for their country. Democrats, in turn, viewed the crisis as evidence of Trump’s indifference to public well-being. At a time when solidarity and bipartisan unity were sorely needed, Americans came to see the pandemic in partisan terms, adopting behaviors and attitudes that continue to divide us today. This book draws on a wealth of new data on public opinion to show how pandemic politics has touched all aspects of our lives—from the economy to race and immigration—and puts America’s COVID-19 response in global perspective.
An in-depth account of a uniquely American tragedy, Pandemic Politics reveals how the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic has profound and troubling implications for public health and the future of democracy itself."
Past Events
“The Speaker Series lineup brings in top experts from across the disciplines, but in an intimate setting. These are talks that I make sure to go to.”
—Dr. Drew Margolin, Assistant Professor in Cornell’s Department of Communications
“I just recently attended Professor Stroud’s Speaker Series talk, in which she spoke about engaging partisanship and presented two fascinating new studies about online media coverage. Her talk was very helpful for my own research about the relationship between politics and media, but also because it touched upon problems that are highly relevant to the fields of government and communications. I am very glad that the Roper Center always brings in such interesting guests from the social sciences who do cutting-edge research.”