Todd Gitlin. Photograph by The Associated Press.

Todd Gitlin, a social historian, activist and professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, offers a talk titled Will There Be An Occupy 2.0? The lecture will draw on his recent book, Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street (HarperCollins).

Open to the public at no charge, the event is part of the Civic Forum Series at Bates, sponsored by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. The series invites audiences to contemplate civic, political and policy issues significant to Maine and beyond.

For more information, please call 207-786-6202. Gitlin’s appearance is presented in partnership with the Machiah Center, a New Gloucester organization that brings writers, activists and citizens together for programs that promote democracy and social justice.

At Bates, Gitlin will address the strengths and weaknesses of the Occupy movement, the ways it has helped shape the presidential campaign, and how the movement might proceed within a political environment it has helped transform.

The author of 15 books, Gitlin has also published in mainstream periodicals like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Harper’s and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He frequently speaks and writes about the globalization of popular uprisings; movements and parties in American politics; continuity and changes between the 1960s and the 2010s; the future of journalism, fiction and writing in the digital age; and new media.

In the 1960s, Gitlin was the third president of Students for a Democratic Society and helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first American demonstration against corporate aid to the apartheid regime in South Africa.