Fourth annual Dr. Matthew Holden, Jr. Symposium Lecture held at Jackson State University

University of Illinois Springfield Professor of Political Science Dr. Matthew Holden, Jr. will be honored during the annual symposium and lecture that bears his name. The event will be held on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.

Dr. Holden is the first Wepner Distinguished Professor in Political Science at UIS and is a nationally recognized expert on public administration, politics and law, urban politics and racial and ethnic relations.

The Symposium Lecture will be given by Dianne Pinderhughes, University of Notre Dame President’s Distinguished Professor. The title of the lecture is “Being President Barack Hussein Obama Black Politics After the Civil Rights Revolution”.

Pinderhughes earned her B.A. degree from Albertus Magnus College and the Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. Her research examines the impact of racial, ethnic and gender politics on public policy and civil society institutions. Her seminal work is Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics: A Reexamination of Pluralist Theory. She served as president of the American Political Science Association as well as a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow and Brookings Institution Guest Scholar.

In 2004, Dr. Holden and his wife Dorothy donated their personal library of more than 4,000 volumes to the Jackson State University Center for University Scholars. The Center facilitates faculty research productivity and encourages academic discourse. It hosts an annual symposium for recipients of summer research grants. In recognition of Professor Holden’s accomplishments and his generous donation to JSU, the Center has named a reading room and this lecture in his honor.

Active in policy and praxis, Holden authored The Divisible Republic, Resources and Decisions and What Government Does and served as president of the American Political Science Association, president of the Policy Studies Organization and commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulation Commission.