The address "France and the U.S.: Two Worldviews at Odds?" will be presented by the Honorable Dr. Dominique Decherf, French Consul General in Chicago, Ill., on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at 4 p.m. at Hope College in the Maas Center conference room.

The talk will consider the differences and similarities in the cultural perceptions of politics in France and the United States.

The public is invited. Admission is free.

Decherf's research interests include U.S.-French analysis, French foreign policy, Africa, religion and international affairs, religion and human rights, and the relationship between church and state. He is the author of several scholarly papers, and during 2000-01 was a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

He has been with the French consulate in Chicago since the summer of 2001. His other assignments abroad have included serving as charge d'affaires in Angola from 1977 to 1979 and in Tanzania from 1979 to 1982; as deputy consul general in Jerusalem from 1982 to 1986; and as charge d'affaires in Burkina Faso from 1989 to 1993, in Saudi Arabia from 1993 to 1994, and the Ivory Coast and Liberia from 1994 to 1997.

Decherf was deputy spokesman with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, France, from 1987 to 1989, and was director of human resources with the ministry from 1997 to 2000.

He holds a Ph.D. in law from the Pantheon-Sorbonne in Paris, and master's degrees from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales Vivantes (Swahili) in Paris.

Decherf's talk is hosted by the college's French Studies Colloquium. The Maas Center is located on Columbia Avenue at 11th Street.