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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Activist David Cobb, who ran for United States president in 2004 on the Green Party ticket and has made his life's work battling corporate power, will give the 2012 Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace on Tuesday, April 24, at Oregon State University.

The free, public event begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Austin Auditorium of LaSells Stewart Center, 875 S.W. 26th St., Corvallis. The title of his talk is "Corporate Personhood:  The Legal Doctrine that Perverts the Promise of Democracy."

Cobb is national projects director at the community organizing group Democracy Unlimited and is a spokesman for Move To Amend, a national coalition calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish "corporate personhood," or the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision, which asserts that corporate entities have the same rights under law as people.

He was born in San Leon, Texas, and worked as a laborer before going to college. Cobb graduated from the University of Houston Law School in 1993 and maintained a successful private law practice in Houston for several years before devoting himself full-time to activism.

In 2002, Cobb ran for Attorney General of Texas, pledging to use the office to revoke the charters of corporations that violate health, safety and environmental laws. In 2004, he ran on the Green Party presidential ticket and successfully campaigned for a recount of ballots in Ohio.

Now in its 29th year, this annual lectureship honors Linus Pauling, an OSU graduate and two-time Nobel Prize laureate, and his wife, Ava Helen Pauling, a noted peace activist. It is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts.