Tuesday, February 1, 2022 at 7:30 pm via Zoom link http://bit.ly/LyceumJustHarvest
Prof. Chris Bosso, School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science, Northeastern University
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the Food Stamp Program, is the nation’s largest, most controversial, and, compared to the alternatives, least politically problematic way to supplement the capacity of low-income Americans to provide their families with an adequate diet. This talk describes how SNAP works and traces the program to its New Deal origins and its revival in the early 1960s to address pockets of hunger. Today SNAP is the foundation of the nation’s food and income assistance safety net. How has it survived all of these years, and is this the best to enable all American families to obtain an adequate diet?
Christopher Bosso is Professor of Public Policy and Politics at Northeastern University. His areas of interest include food and environmental policy, science and technology policy, and the governance of emerging technologies. His newest books are Framing the Farm Bill: Interests, Ideology, and the Agricultural Act of 2014 and, as editor and contributor, Feeding Cities: Improving Local Food Access, Sustainability, and Resilience. His current research efforts include: the paper “Policy Innovation in the U.S. States: Gubernatorial v. Local Experimentation in Administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program;” a book on the history, current politics, and future of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and the paper, “Farm Programs + Food Stamps: Lessons from the Battle over TANF.”