Princeton's Lee Silver to Lecture at Furman on Genetic Engineering

March 16 lecture is part of 2010 Tocqueville Program

GREENVILLE, SC – March 4, 2010 – Princeton University professor Lee M. Silver will present his views on genetic engineering as part of the 2010 Tocqueville Program Lecture Series on Biotechnology and Politics on Tuesday, March 16 at Furman University.

Silver, whose efforts to reach a wider audience have taken him from sparring with satirist Stephen Colbert to appearing in a BBC documentary on “designer babies,” will lecture on “Choosing the Genes of Our Children and the Future of Humankind.”

The lecture, at 8 p.m. in Younts Conference Center, is free and open to the public.

Silver is professor of molecular biology and public policy and teaches in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. Two of his books are Challenging Nature: The Clash between Biotechnology and Spirituality and Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family.

The Tocqueville Program, which includes the lecture series as well as a course, is presented each year by Furman’s Department of Political Science.

 Prominent scholars and public intellectuals are brought to campus to encourage serious and open engagement with the moral questions at the heart of political life. Silver’s lecture is the second of three in the 2010 series.

The final Tocqueville lecture will be on April 14 when Peter Augustine Lawler speaks on “Stuck with Virtue in Our Pro-Life Future: The Persistence of Human Nature in the Era of Biotechnology.”

For more information, go online to http://ps.furman.edu/engaged/tocqueville/index.html or call the political science department at 864-294-3547.