In announcing controversial nutrition journalist Michael Pollan as this semester's Snyder lecturer, Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser reflected on the role that speakers in the series should play.
"The idea is that they should be provocative in their field," Glaser told the Daily. "They should take on sacred cows. They should be people who break new ground."
This spring's choice does both — and quite literally.
Pollan, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has written extensively about food; his work raises serious questions about the meat industry and unearths fresh perspectives about what grows in the ground. He will speak at Tufts as part of the semesterly Richard E. Snyder Presidential Lecture Series on
March 24.
"He is one of the most important figures in a national debate over how we feed the nation and the world," University President Lawrence Bacow told the Daily in an e-mail.
The selection of Pollan, whose books focus heavily on the discord between natural farming cycles and industrial agriculture, as well as on the co-evolution of certain plant species with humans, has piqued the interest of academics at Tufts' Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.
Miriam Nelson, the director of the John Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at the Friedman School, described Pollan as somewhat of a polarizing figure in the nutrition community.
"There are people who feel he has pushed the envelope and there are others who feel that he's really getting at the heart of some of the issues that we're all dealing with," she said.
In particular, Pollan criticizes the reliance on corn in both the meat industry, where it is used to feed cows, and in industrial agriculture. He has also served as a voice for simplification at a time when researchers are increasingly exploring ways to genetically modify food.
Pollan's views pose a serious threat to established interests. "It would mean that our policies are favoring large agro businesses, and that's having a downstream effect on our food supply [and] influencing health," Nelson said. "It sort of hits a nerve in a number of areas for people."
While these implications are particularly concerning for food producers, they also extend to the common consumer, who may be taken aback by the implications Pollan's suggestions have for mainstream dieting theories.
"I think that there's a prescriptive element to his work, and I don't think it's just candy bars and fast food hamburgers that he's preaching against," Glaser said.
While Pollan writes extensively about food, his formal background is in journalism rather than nutrition. Even so, his books, which include "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" (2006) and "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" (2008), have made quite a splash among the academic elite — and with popular audiences.
"He's not just a fly-by-night kind of ... huckster who is talking about nutrition," Nelson said. "He's a very credible academic."
The Snyder Presidential Lecture Series kicked off in 2004, and has since featured controversial figures including author Salman Rushdie, affirmative action critic Shelby Steele and former Harvard president Larry Summers.
Last semester's speaker was Tom Freston, a co-founder of MTV. Freston pioneered the idea of the music video, even when most industry insiders saw little value in it.
"The whole beauty of that lecture is that everybody thought he would fail miserably, and now it's turned into [part of our] everyday lives," Glaser said of Freston's legacy.
