Description:

Please join the American Politics Workshop as they host Dr. Cindy Kam, professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University

Obesity and chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes have risen in the past decades in the United States. Policymakers have considered myriad policy solutions to address this public health problem, many of which focus on what we eat. At one extreme is an outright restriction on the public’s ability to purchase unhealthy food; the public balks at any such restriction. Yet at the same time, support for restrictions on what can be purchased using means-tested food assistance is extremely high. This paper highlights these divergent reactions to exertions of social control on disparate populations, probing the degree to which paternalism and punitiveness differentially underscore support for restrictions on food policy, depending on whose choices are restricted.

Professor Kam received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2003. Her research focuses on political psychology, public opinion, political participation, and political methodology. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Behavior, among other outlets, and she has published two books: Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion, co-authored with Donald R. Kinder, and Modeling and Interpreting Interactive Hypotheses in Regression Analysis, co-authored with Robert J. Franzese, Jr.. She received the Best Dissertation in Political Psychology award in 2004, the Pi Sigma Alpha award for Best Paper Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association in 2006, and the award for the Best Paper Published in the Journal of Politics in 2009. In 2011, she was awarded the Emerging Scholar Award from the Elections, Voting Behavior, and Public Opinion Section of the American Political Science Association and the Erik H. Erikson Award from the International Society of Political Psychology. She teaches courses on public opinion, political psychology, and research methods, and she regularly co-authors papers with graduate students.