Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith will speak on the topic Walking the Tightrope: The Tensions Between Work and Family in America Today at 6:45 p.m. on Monday, April 1, at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum.
Executive producer and correspondent for PBS's recent nationwide special on "Juggling Work and Family," Smith's visit is sponsored by CMC's Berger Institute for Work, Family and Children, and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies. Smith draws on the experiences and daily obstacles of high tech managers in Silicon Valley and assembly line workers in the Midwest, alike. He reports on the strategies progressive companies use to ease the pressures on employees raising children or caring for their own elderly parents. Exploring the structural and cultural norms in America, which were formed a half-century ago, he questions whether or not these norms are appropriate in today's society.
Having recently completed the series on work and family, Smith previously hosted twelve prime-time PBS specials and series on issues as diverse as Washington's power game, Soviet perestroika, the global economy, and teen violence. For 26 years, Smith was a correspondent for The New York Times. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he served as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent on the team that produced the Pentagon Papers.
The lecture is free and open to the public on a first-come basis. For information call the Athenaeum at 621-8244.