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Consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader will discuss "The 2012 Presidential Election, An Impossible Choice," for the annual Casper Memorial Lecture at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 14, at Miami University Middletown's Miriam G. Knoll Community Center.
All tickets for this event have been reserved, but the public is invited to watch the lecture from an adjoining room via live feed. The lecture will also be broadcast on TV Middletown at a later date.
Honored by Time magazine as “One of the 100 Most Influential Americans of the Twentieth Century,” Nader has devoted his life to giving people the tools they need to defend themselves against corporate negligence and government indifference. He continues to expose the dangers that threaten a free and safe society.
Nader’s foray into public life began in 1965 when he took on the Goliath of the auto industry with his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, an exposé of the disregard carmakers held for the safety of their customers. The Senate hearing into Nader’s accusations and the resulting motor vehicle safety laws catapulted Nader into the public sphere.
Believing that Republicans and Democrats are so close ideologically that he calls them “tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum,” Nader organized the Green Party’s first presidential campaign in 1996 to challenge the “duopoly” of the two-party system. He received 700,000 votes on a limited campaign budget of $5,000 and he ran again in 2000, receiving 2.8 million votes. His goal is to build the foundation of a third political party, and create a robust progressive political movement that rallies around issues rather than empty slogans and figureheads.
The Casper Lectures were endowed by the late Isidor A. Casper, a Miami alumnus and prominent Middletown attorney, to honor the memory of his parents, Alex and Lena. Past Casper Lecturers have included Nobel Laureates Linus Pauling and Oscar Arias, journalists Daniel Schorr and Robert Novak and Ambassadors Elliott Richardson and Edmund Muskie.
A reception will follow the lecture.
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