Two notable personalities in American politics, author Robert Putnam and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, will be presenting their views on civic virtue Saturday.

Putnam’s speech will begin at 2 p.m., with Giuliani’s speech following at 3:15 p.m. Both speeches will be held in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

Political science professor and conference organizer Tom Rice said the presentations will be very enlightening.

“To my mind, Putnam is one of the top five political scientists in the country,” Rice said. “Giuliani is important because he’s one of America’s most colorful and important politicians right now. Whether you like politics or not, he’s one interesting guy.”

Professor of political science Steffen Schmidt said Putnam will present an interesting take on civic virtue, “one of the biggest issues in American politics.”

“This is whether Americans have become really self-centered and think in terms only of me and themselves,” he said.

This topic also is the subject of Putnam’s most recent book “Making Democracy Work.”

Giuliani will be speaking on his efforts to “clean up” New York City.

“Giuliani you definitely want to hear because he is colorful and kind of a character,” Schmidt said. “Giuliani is the hard-ass prosecutor who got elected mayor of New York and cleaned up the city.”

Students may recognize Giuliani from his appearances on such television shows as “Late Night with David Letterman” and “Saturday Night Live.”

The unexpected addition of Giuliani to the conference, just two weeks ago, came as quite a surprise to Rice.

“I was shocked, quite frankly,” he said. “It is Iowa, though, and you do expect politicians to come here, and Giuliani is a potential presidential candidate.”

Schmidt agreed that Iowa is fertile ground for presidential campaigning.

“Let me tell you that I’ve been at ISU for 30 years,” Schmidt said. “You could get God to come to Iowa if he were running for president.”

Rice said the lectures will be one of the “special opportunities of the semester.”

“To hear two people like this back to back — you couldn’t ask for a better duo,” Rice said.

Putnam and Giuliani are coming to ISU through the efforts of the political science and sociology departments, the Committee on Lectures and ISU Extension. Their lectures are part of the Iowa Conference of Political Scientists.