EASTON -- Lafayette College is hosting a discussion tonight on the world's love-hate relationship with American culture.

The discussion on "American Culture: Benevolent Force or Evil Empire" is scheduled for 6 p.m. in Room 104 of the Kirby Hall of Civil Rights. It is free to the public.

Nile Rodgers, the guest speaker, embodies the ambivalence of the topic. A musician, music producer and entrepreneur, Rodgers wrote such feel-good disco songs as "We Are Family" and "Le Freak."

Rodgers, 51, was also a member of the controversial, anti-establishment Black Panther Party. He describes the party's actions as geared toward promoting diversity, denying that it was racially motivated.

Rodgers rekindled his activist spirit to unify people after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks killed thousands in New York City, at the Pentagon and in western Pennsylvania.

In 2002, Rodgers formed the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation to promote his vision of a global family through the use of "We Are Family" as a simple song and straightforward message. Rodgers organized two re-recordings of the song by 200 celebrities and again by children's television characters.

Today Rodgers' focus is on producing the soul and rock group Maroon 5 and playing with such acts as Sly and the Family Stone, Duran Duran, Diana Ross and his own band from the 1970s, Chic.

Rodgers' presentation today, leading up to a panel discussion, is Lafayette's annual Landis Lecture for this school year. The town hall-style meeting is co-sponsored by Rodgers' foundation and the student organization Americans for Informed Democracy.

Four similar meetings have been held with plans for about half-dozen more, according to Seth Green a student at Yale who helped found Americans for Informed Democracy in October 2002.

Green said Rodgers' foundation and Americans for Informed Democracy chose Easton for one of the town hall meetings to bring the discussion to "real Americans," not just those in New York City, London and other of their big-city hosts.

"Our group seeks to bring foreign policy issues to the people to debate," Green said.

This series of meetings focuses on the international community's perception of Americans and the expansion of businesses and popular culture from the United States throughout the world.

"What we've really been investigating is America's omnipresence in the world," said Green. "It's revered in some ways and resented in others. It's not always easily understandable."

Lafayette College is home -- at least through May graduation -- to AID member Olivia Tusinksi. She said she's excited about the discussion, particularly for students' benefit.

"I don't think there's a lot of outward attention paid by students to what the rest of the world thinks of America," said Tusinksi, a 22-year-old anthropology and sociology major from Massachusetts.

Joining Rodgers on the panel for today's discussion are Dan Bauer, professor of anthropology at Lafayette and director of the college's Technology Clinic program; Katalin Fabian, a government and law professor at Lafayette and an author; and Amardeep Singh, an English professor at Lehigh University.