Democracy 2024

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…

Since the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, legal scholars, political pundits, professors of history, and others have debated whether the United States has taken a turn from democracy toward fascism. Some say it has. Others argue it has not. The very uncertainty about what has or has not happened gave rise to Assistant Professor of History Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’ new book, “Did it Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America.” It’s an anthology of texts from thought leaders from certain periods in the 20th and 21st centuries who take positions on the state of fascism in America. Many of the…

From book bans to restrictions on teaching, in recent years, there have been clear infringements on First Amendment rights in the U.S. and the problem may be more widespread than people realize. There was, for example, a 33 percent increase in book bans in the 2022-23 school year from the 2021-22 school year, largely targeting books about race, racism, and gender issues or featuring on LGBTQ+ characters and characters of color. Meanwhile, more than 300 gag order bills have been introduced across 46 state legislatures restricting the discussion of gender and racial identities, censorship of teaching materials, and, in some…

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

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

Did It Happen Here?

Hugo Black Lecturers Establish What’s at Stake When Free Expression on Campus is Imperiled