Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader called for the University to establish classes in civic skills during a lecture given to students and a handful of faculty members last night.
"Growing up civic means you can see through phony politicians," Nader said. "We know that Congress is our hired hands, not our rulers; corporations are our servants, not what they are today, which is our masters. The moral path has to be blazed by civic engagement."
Nader argued for community interests over corporate ones, saying corporations have undue influence in governmental affairs.
"Every time we subordinate a commercial value to civic values we advance," he said.
A well-known consumer advocate, Nader cited movements for automobile safety standards and the introduction of anti-smoking laws as examples of the value of citizen involvement in combating corporate interests.
He called for citizens to speak out against obesity epidemics, white collar crime and the lack of adequate health care.
Nader urged students to get involved in government by applying the skills they learn in class to perform a check on governmental power.
"What makes you angry other than gender, racial and ethnic slurs, which you should be angry about, [but] why don't you expand a little?" he said.
Being in the business of acquiring knowledge means academic institutions are in a unique position to be places of civic engagement, he said.
"Where are the universities?" he asked. "What good is the department of economics if they couldn't expose and condemn the student loan racket? What do you think the law schools are doing about it, the least they could do is teach their students about it. Few have corporate crime courses -- and it's not like there isn't any business."
Nader advocated grassroots involvement in addition to academic involvement, allowing members of both Ignite, a student anti-smoking group, and the Living Wage Campaign to make announcements about their causes.
University Programs Council member Cynthia Boncella said the group brought Nader to Grounds because of his appeal beyond the mainstream.
Nader's talk is part of the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Lecture Series, which is sponsored by the committee through an endowment from the Class of 1984.
"We felt that Nader was a more intelligent speaker and what we thought the Thomas Jefferson Lecture should be," Boncella said.
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