The WSU Humanities Center invites faculty, students, staff, and the community to a Brown Bag presentation given by Thomas Trimble (Associate Professor, English) on the topic of, "Liberalism, Public Policy, and the Asteriod that will One Day Destroy the Earth".

Abstract: Rare, high-stakes events such as near-Earth objects (NEOs) present unique challenges for policy actors in liberal democracies, including the punctuated nature of democratic policymaking, political polarization, and the unique psychology of rare events. This talk will describe the potential of policy process theory to better understand how policy actors use policy images and policy narratives to frame rare events, using the case of congressional testimony regarding near-Earth objects and planetary defens