The distinguished scholar and former Italian senator Dr. Gianfranco Pasquino will deliver the Henrietta Harvey Lecture at Memorial University on Wednesday Sept. 24. 

His lecture, Improving and Debasing the Quality of Democracy, will start at 7 p.m. at the Inco Lecture Theatre, IIC-2001.

A professor of political science at the University of Bologna, Senior Adjunct Professor of European Studies at the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University and former Senator of the Italian Republic, this will be Dr. Pasquino’s first visit to Newfoundland.

In addition to the Henrietta Harvey Lecture, Dr. Pasquino will take part in a departmental seminar on Friday Sept. 26, at 3:30 p.m. in room SN-2033 of the Science Building. His topic will be Is There Anything Really Peculiar About Italian Politics?

Dr. Osvaldo Croci in the Department of Political Science is delighted to have someone of Dr. Pasquino’s calibre and reputation coming to Memorial to lecture and interact with students and faculty.

“Dr. Pasquino is the most prolific and active political scientist in Italy and has an international reputation second perhaps only to that of Giovanni Sartori,” said Dr. Croci. "He has been a visiting professor or guest lecturer in some of the world’s major universities, including both Oxford and Harvard. He harmoniously conjugates sophisticated theoretical insights with a lecture style that is both clear and captivating."

Dr. Pasquino will speak on how the quality of democracy depends on the ability of women and men to organize their lives and to fight for all the improvements they can obtain, by essentially grabbing them from their politicians.

Considering recent developments in both the ongoing Canadian and American elections, his visit couldn’t come at a more opportune time.

The Henrietta Harvey Lecture
Henrietta Harvey was a Nova Scotian who came to Newfoundland in 1905 to visit her aunt, Lady Whiteway, the wife of Newfoundland’s prime minister. A year later she settled in St. John’s as the wife of St. John’s businessman John Harvey. When she died, in 1964, her will directed a substantial portion of her estate to Memorial University. The Henrietta Harvey lectureship is possible in any year where there are funds left over from the funding of the Henrietta Harvey research chair, the primary purpose of the endowment fund left by Ms. Harvey.