Democracy 2024

Three Wesleyan professors—Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, Associate Professor of Government Logan Dancey, and Assistant Professor of Government Justin Peck—made sense of this year’s election results and the potential path forward during a talk, “The 2024 Election: What Happened and What’s Next?” on Nov. 7. Fowler, co-director the Wesleyan Media Project, said that there would be careful analysis of the year’s election once all the votes are fully counted. Fowler also cautioned against reading too much into the results or focusing on identity politics until those analyses are completed. She said that many political scientists were able to predict…

Wesleyan’s Government Department gathered students to take in the results of the Nov. 5 election together, with games, snacks, and multiple news feeds. “I feel like today, and this time in particular, is very anxiety inducing,” said Adriana Begolli ’25, co-chair of the Government Majors Committee. “Everyone can't focus on their work because they're really nervous. So, we really just wanted to come up with a space that people can learn more about what's going on, but it doesn’t feel super anxious.” Professor of Government Mary Alice Haddad said she helped to create the event because this election night…

For many, the ideal of democracy lies in the concepts of government by the people and the rule of the majority. While this is a significant part of what makes a democracy work, or fail, the discourse surrounding elections plays a key role, too, said Xander Starobin ’27. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Starobin and dozens of other Wesleyan students have taken action to strengthen democracy, canvassing in states that could define this year’s election, and the country, going forward. “To be able to go canvass—which is directly talking to people about what people are concerned about,…

Images of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 are still shocking. What had historically been a ceremonial procedure turned riotous and deadly. The peaceful transfer of power between administrations was a point of national pride taught in history books, but today it is mired in uncertainty. Robert Cassidy, assistant professor of the practice in government, gathered four scholars with different perspectives on what may happen this election cycle at a panel on Oct. 17. Logan Dancey, associate professor of government, offered insight into political developments and election reforms passed since the 2020 election. David Aaron ’95, visiting professor of…

What do Christian, Jewish, and Hindu Americans have in common? They all have someone representing their faith on the national political stage in the 2024 presidential campaign. That intersection of religion and politics was the focus of a talk, “The Fluidity of American Faith: Real Talk about Religion and the 2024 Presidential Race,” by investigative journalist and author Sarah Posner ’86 on Oct. 17 at the Frank Center for Public Affairs. In introducing Posner, Department of Religion Chair Andrew Quintman said, “religion informs our understanding of so many aspects of our human life and that's especially true of our current…

“What is Political About Art?” was the question posed at the Theater Department’s fall Talk It Out and Long Table conversation on October 10. The event was organized by Assistant Professor of Theater Katie Pearl, Associate Professor of Theater and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Katie Brewer Ball, and included the student cast of Of Government in the Theater Studios. Pearl will be directing four performances of Agnes Borinsky’s play Of Government in the CFA Theater Nov. 7 to Nov. 9. The work deals with the connected processes of making theater and making society. “Every time we do a play, we…

There are only three places in the United States where incarcerated individuals never lose their right to vote: the District of Columbia, Maine, and Vermont. Connecticut is one of 23 states where incarcerated people lose their right to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 2021, the state passed a bill restoring the right to vote for most people on parole and probation. Two advocates for this bill’s passage—State Senator Gary Winfield and organizer James Jeter—joined reentry expert Tracie Bernardi Guzman in conversation about barriers to voting in Connecticut at Wesleyan’s Allbritton Center for the Study of…

On October 2, Saidiya Hartman ’83, Hon. ’19 joined Kaneza Schaal ’06 in a conversation about their collaborative process of creating the new performance work Litany for Grieving Sisters. Moderated by Kiara Benn ’20, the event was hosted by Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts and convened in the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. Based on Hartman’s essay of the same name, which was originally published in the journal Representations in 2022, the work explores themes of collective grief, love, and resilience. The three Wesleyan alumnae discussed the evolution of the project as they collaborate in a democratic process…

Senior Julia Armeli '25 is one of a dozen undergraduate students using innovative technologies to make sense of the deluge of political ads targeting citizens at Delta Lab, the computational arm of the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP). This election season, Armeli, her student colleagues at Delta Lab — and another group of students at WMP known as human coders — will continue to apply their research and analytical skills to shed light on an increasingly diverse and polarized media messaging landscape. Delta Lab is a student-centered lab that draws on the skills and passion of students to analyze political ads…

United States Senator John Hickenlooper ’74, MA ’80, Hon. ’10 didn’t set out to become a politician when he graduated from Wesleyan half a century ago. He wanted to be a geologist, but when that didn’t pan out, he found success as an entrepreneur and brewery owner in Denver at the height of the craft brewing craze. When he ran for mayor of Denver at the age of 49, Hickenlooper never anticipated that national politics would play such a huge role in his second act. But after serving as mayor for two terms, he became governor of Colorado for another…

Journalists have always played a vital role in defending democracy, educating the public while holding those in power accountable for their actions. Few journalists have challenged Americans to reimagine who we are as a nation as much as Nikole Hannah-Jones. On April 25, the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life co-sponsored an event with Wesleyan’s Democracy 2024 initiative to host Hannah-Jones, a New York Times correspondent, Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning creator of the 1619 Project. Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies Tracy Heather Strain sat down with Hannah-Jones to discuss…

The word “liberalism” is a tricky thing. As The New Yorker magazine staff writer Adam Gopnik discovered while promoting his 2019 book A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism, its variants carry different political baggage from one Western country to the next. Its breadth renders it ideologically elusive, encompassing societies with social democracies, free markets, and shades of grey. Lately, its survival has come into question even in places where its future once seemed assured. But last Thursday in front of a near-capacity audience at the Frank Center for Public Affairs, Gopnik spoke passionately of liberalism’s origins, what…

Wesleyan Faculty on Election Results, Path Forward

Gallery: Election Night Watch Party

Wesleyan Students Canvass Voters in Key Swing State

Peaceful Transfer of Power? Scholars Discuss the Possibilities

Alumni Author Talk on Religion and the Presidential Race

Students, Faculty Explore Intersection of Art and Politics

Breaking Down ‘Barriers to the Ballot’

Democracy in Action: Three Alumnae Discuss Collaboration on New Performance Work

Student-Led Lab Shines Light on Political Advertising

Democracy 2024: Hickenlooper, Roth talk Political Optimism and Opportunity

No Democracy Without Slavery: A Revolutionary Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones

Democracy Demands Passionate Defense, Says Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker