Recorded on October 20, 2020, this video features a lecture by Robert D. Putnam, Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University.

Presented by the Citrin Center for Public Opinion, named after Jack Citrin, the Citrin Award annual event recognizes the career of an individual who has made significant contributions to the study and understanding of public opinion. The 2020 Award celebrates the achievements of Robert Putnam, one of the most distinguished political scientists in the country, whose work has been an indispensable guide to understanding the underpinnings of democracy and community in America and elsewhere.

Raised in a small town in Ohio, he was educated at Swarthmore, Oxford, and Yale. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal, the nation’s highest honor for contributions to the humanities, for “deepening our understanding of community in America.”

Putnam has written fifteen books, translated into twenty languages, including Making Democracy Work: Civic Transitions in Italy and Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, both among the most cited social science works in the last half-century.

In this lecture, Professor Putnam presents his latest book, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again.