A former U.S. senator and four distinguished journalists and scholars will spend the spring term at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.

Sen. Alan Simpson, the visiting lecturer in the Laurence M. Lombard Chair, has more than 30 years of public service. Simpson was elected to the Wyoming State Legislature in 1964 and in 1978, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served for 18 years. In 1984, Simpson was elected by his peers to the position of assistant republican leader and served in that capacity until 1994. He is the author of Right in the Old Gazoo (W. Morrow, 1997), a book about the relationship between politicians and the media. Simpson's course is called Creating Legislation: Congress and the Press; he draws on his Wyoming Legislature and U.S. Senate experience, his former position as Republican Whip, his work as a lawyer in Cody, and his lively encounters with the media.

The Laurence M. Lombard Lecture was established by the family and friends of Laurence M. Lombard, a director of the Dow Jones Co. for 28 years, to help build a substantial body of knowledge concerning the interaction of media and politics and their influence on public policy.

"What a delight -- to have Senator Simpson interacting with our fellows about his favorite subject -- the intersection of press and politics," said Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Center. "I suspect he will learn from them, and the students, and they will all learn from him."

Spring Fellows

James Carroll was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1969. A peace activist and civil rights worker, he served as Catholic chaplain at Boston University until 1974. He left the priesthood to become a writer. He has published nine novels, including Mortal Friends, Prince of Peace, The City Below, and his memoir, An American Requiem: God, My Father and the War that Came Between Us, which won the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction. His work appears in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. Carroll writes a weekly op-ed column for The Boston Globe. He will explore the relationship between press, politics, public policy, and religion.

Connie Chung is former co-anchor of the CBS Evening News, and anchor/correspondent on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung. She began her career in journalism in 1969 as a copyperson for Metromedia (now Fox) station WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C., In 1971, she joined CBS News as a national correspondent in its Washington bureau. In 1976, she joined KNXT-TV (now KCBS-TV), the CBS-owned television station in Los Angeles, as anchor for its evening newscasts. In 1983, Chung left CBS and joined NBC News as a correspondent and anchor. Her assignments included anchoring the Saturday edition of the NBC Nightly News, NBC News Digest, and several prime-time specials and a newsmagazine. Chung was also a substitute anchor on NBC Nightly News. In 1989, she rejoined CBS News as anchor and sole correspondent on Saturday Night with Connie Chung. She and her husband, Maury Povich, are developing a half-hour news and information program scheduled for launch in the fall of 1998, to be produced in partnership with DreamWorks SKG. Chung is the recipient of numerous distinctions, including three Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award. She will explore "baby boomer" news.

David Farrell has been a Jean Monnet Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Manchester since 1991. Farrell has taught in Dublin and Cardiff and in 1994, he held an Australian Research Council Visiting Fellowship at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. Co-editor of two journals, Party Politics and Representation, his books include Comparing Electoral Systems; British Elections and Parties Yearbooks; and Electoral Strategies and Political Marketing. Published in several journals such as the British Journal of Political Science and Electoral Studies, his research interests include electoral systems, parties and campaigning, and comparative legislatures. He will research the telecommunications revolution in U.S. electioneering.

Barbara Pfetsch has been a senior researcher at the Science Center for Social Research in Berlin since 1994. Pfetsch has taught at the University of Mannheim, the Free University of Berlin, and the University of Potsdam. In 1991, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University. Pfetsch wrote a monograph on the political consequences of the privatization of the electronic media in Germany and has published in several journals and books, including the European Journal of Communication, the European Broadcasting Union Review, and various German mass communication journals. Her research interests include political communication and public opinion theories, the interface between media and politics, media use and political attitudes, and election campaigns. She will examine the differences between government media relations in the U.S. and Germany.