Professor Guy Adams Lecturing in Dept. of Public Administration

From Jan 12 to 13, 2010, Professor Guy B. Adams visited Jinan University and gave two lectures in the Public Administration Department, Management School. Professor Adams is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of American Review of Public Administration, Executive Committee Member of American Society for Public Administration, and former associate Director of Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri-Columbia. His book, Unmasking Administrative Evil, is an outstanding work of normative research in Public Administration field, has got a lot of academic awards.

In the first lecture with the topic The Problem of Administrative Evil in the Universal Culture of Technical Rationality , Professor Adams used the example of Nazi Holocaust in WWII to demonstrate the existence of administrative evil. He analyzed that the technical rationality and moral inversion could create the administrative evil. Professor Adams also introduced the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram Experiments to discuss that people may hurt others at ease if they are directed by the technical rationality and expert .

In the second lecture Learning from Two Places of Evil , Professor Adams showed lots of photos of Auschwitz and Robben Island, and shared his feeling when he toured these two places. This makes the audience think profoundly about the worst of evil. At the ending of the lectures, Professor Adams also criticized the System Failures in America nowadays.

When asked what is good normative research in public administration, Professor Adams, as one of the top scholars in this field said different scholars have different criteria, but he thinks that history and cultural consciousness is critical. His standard is to focus study on history, dynamics, culture, cross-culture, etc. Throughout the lecture, Professor Adams critical research method greatly inspired the audience. After the lecture, Professor Adams interacted with the audience.