- Dutch expert James Kennedy will speak about European health care on Nov. 16.
Orange City native James Kennedy will present a lecture on European health care at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 16, in the Proscenium Theatre.
Kennedy is a professor of Dutch history from the middle ages onward at the University of Amsterdam. His lecture is entitled “Socialist Health Care? The Dutch/European Experience.”
A frequent commentator on Dutch life, Kennedy will speak about the different European health plans, why the Dutch have moved to a privatized system and what that entails. Kennedy has written books on the rise of euthanasia in the Netherlands and on the Netherlands in the 1960s.
Kennedy attended Northwestern from 1982 to 1984 and earned a bachelor’s degree in foreign service at Georgetown University. He received a master’s degree at Calvin College and a doctorate in history at the University of Iowa.
A member of NW’s faculty in 1990-91, Kennedy went on to become a professor of contemporary history at Free University in Amsterdam in 2003 and joined the University of Amsterdam faculty two years ago. He currently writes books on the future of Dutch Protestantism and on the history of the Netherlands.
Doug Carlson, professor of history and a co-worker with Kennedy when he worked at NW, is excited to hear what Kennedy has to say.
“As a college community, our pursuit of greater knowledge and understanding is at the heart of our endeavor, and health care is a huge issue in America—its cost, its quality, its coverage,” Carlson said. “So the question ‘how do other countries deal with health care?’ is a logical and important one to consider.”
Kennedy’s lecture on Monday will help answer that question, at least from a Dutch point of view, and Carlson hopes that NW and the larger area community come to hear Kennedy’s answer.
Carlson said, “The national debate on health care is serious and substantive, and deserves our attention. As Christians, the questions it raises ought to concern us.”
