Renewing the civic bargain September 27, 2023 Democracy today is in trouble: we see free governments wobbling, political tribalism everywhere, and rising authoritarianism. America, once the showcase of democracy done right now seems a system gone wrong. Read More
Listen in: The Darkened Light of Faith September 20, 2023 Listen to a sample chapter from The Darkened Light of Faith – a powerful new account of what a group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American activists, intellectuals, and artists can teach us about democracy. . Read More
Democracy’s real deal September 15, 2023 Was the US Consitution a masterpiece? The common answer has frequently been an unabashed “yes,” but many critics now complain that the Constitution was fatally flawed from the beginning. Read More
Listen in: To Build a Black Future September 14, 2023 Listen to a sample chapter from To Build a Black Future – an incisive portrait of how the new Black politics can forge a future centered on collective action, community, and care. Read More
24/7 Politics September 07, 2023 As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Read More
Liberalism’s back to the future moment August 23, 2023 Today liberalism faces a global challenge from populism. To successfully meet this challenge, liberals must return to certain features of liberalism common in the nineteenth century but largely absent since WWII. Read More
Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi on The Individualists May 01, 2023 Libertarianism emerged in the mid-nineteenth century with an unwavering commitment to progressive causes, from women’s rights and the fight against slavery to anti-colonialism and Irish emancipation. Read More
On the tactics of modern strongmen April 27, 2023 Dictators have been changing. They did not loosen their grip over the population—far from it, they worked to design more effective instruments of control. But they did so while acting the part of democrats. Read More
Listen in: Algorithms for the People March 15, 2023 Artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping our world. Police forces use them to decide where to send police officers, judges to decide whom to release on bail, welfare agencies to decide which children are at risk of abuse, and Facebook and Google to rank content and distribute ads. Read More
Why democracy belongs in artificial intelligence February 21, 2023 Most of the real harms AI systems can cause—but also the opportunities they can afford—are nothing to do with robots taking over the world or self-generating AI systems. They are to do with what, how, when, and why we should use powerful predictive tools in the decision-making systems of our political, social, and economic organizations. Read More
Pandemic Politics February 20, 2023 COVID-19 has killed more people than any war or public health crisis in American history, but the scale and grim human toll of the pandemic were not inevitable. Read More
The curse of long-ruling autocrats January 18, 2023 In October 2022, during the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping was “reelected” as the party’s chairman, paving his way for a third term as China’s top political leader. Read More
From 9/11 to 1/6: The long legacy that led to the attack on the Capitol January 05, 2023 The events of both September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021 were unprecedented in our nation’s history. In this video from Karen Greenberg, we can see how increased secrecy and decreased accountability within American politics post 9/11 fostered a political climate in which Trumpism was able to thrive. Read More
In dialogue: Perspectives on migration December 14, 2022 Few phenomena sway global politics today as does migration. Economic volatility, violence-laden crises, and climate change produce millions of migrants annually and collectively threaten to displace much of the world’s population in the coming century. Read More
Alex Zakaras on The Roots of American Individualism November 04, 2022 Individualism is a defining feature of American public life. Its influence is pervasive today, with liberals and conservatives alike promising to expand personal freedom and defend individual rights against unwanted intrusion, be it from big government, big corporations, or intolerant majorities. Read More
