The State of Democracy Lecture Series

A conversation about the campaigns and consequences of the United States presidential election.

Co-sponsored by the Institute of Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship

A State of Democracy Lecture Series and Maxwell School centennial event.

October 25, 2024

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is the Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. He was previously Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University, and President, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi. He has published widely in political theory, history of ideas, Indian constitutional law and politics in India. He is the author of The Burden of Democracy (Penguin 2003) and has produced several edited volumes. He is (most recently) co-editor with Madhav Khosla and Sujit Choudhary of The Oxford Handbook to the Indian Constitution. His forthcoming work looks at philosophical ideas about religion in 20th-century India. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy and SSRC Fellow for 2020.

His policy experience includes being Convenor of the Prime Minister of India's Knowledge Commission (2005-2007) and member of India’s National Security Advisory Board. He is a winner of the Infosys Prize 2011. His citation for the Infosys Prize, written by a Jury Chaired by Amartya Sen read, "Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta has established himself as one of India’s finest scholars and public minds, who has inspired a new generation of intellectual enquiry. He has contributed not only to political philosophy and social theory in general, but has also addressed urgent issues of Indian politics and public policy. Mehta has shown an exemplary willingness to broaden the sphere of public reason and to challenge reigning orthodoxies, while remaining committed to institution building."

This event is co-sponsored by the South Asia Center, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs

March 22, 2024

Why are honest asylum seekers dismissed as liars? Former refugee and award-winning author Dina Nayeri begins with this question, then turns to her own shocking and illuminating experiences, which grow into a reckoning with believability in our culture. Who Gets Believed? is as deeply personal as it is profound in its reflections on morals, language, history, compassion, and the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another. Nayeri offers a new understanding of refugee life, confronting dangers from the metaphor of the swarm to the notion of “good” immigrants. With surprising and provocative questions, her other book, The Ungrateful Refugee, recalibrates the conversation around the refugee experience and encompasses real human stories of what it is like to be forced to flee your home, and to journey across borders in the hope of starting afresh.

Kristi Andersen, professor emerita of political science and senior research associate of the Campbell Institute, will guide the conversation.

November 10, 2023

Jesse Eisinger is a senior editor and reporter at ProPublica. He is the author of the “ The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives." He serves on the advisory board of the University of California; Berkeley’s Financial Fraud Institute, and he was a consultant on season three of the HBO series “Succession.” He was the lead reporter on “The Secret IRS Files,” a series that explored the tax avoidance techniques of the ultrawealthy, drawing a massive trove of previously never-seen tax records of the richest Americans. It won the Selden Ring and the Barlett & Steele prize, among others.

In April 2011, he and a colleague won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series of stories on questionable Wall Street practices that helped make the financial crisis the worst since the Great Depression. He won the 2015 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary. He has also twice been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

He was also a regular columnist for The New York Times’ Dealbook section. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, NewYorker.com, The Washington Post, The Baffler, The American Prospect and on NPR and “This American Life.” Before joining ProPublica, he was the Wall Street Editor of Conde Nast Portfolio and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, covering markets and finance.

March 3, 2023

Sarah Binder is a professor of political science at George Washington University and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, specializing in Congress and legislative politics.

Her books include The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve (with Mark Spindel), and Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock. Both books won the Richard F. Fenno Jr. Prize for the best book published in legislative politics in their respective years of publication, and The Myth of Independence won the Gladys Kammerer Award for the best book published that year on U.S. national policy. Her work has also appeared in the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, and the American Journal of Political Science.

Binder was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a political science editor at The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.

October 21, 2022

Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation Magazine, and author of 11 books on the politics of sports, including his most recent book, “The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World.” He is also the producer of the forthcoming documentary, “Behind the Shield: NFL at the Crossroads.”

March 25, 2022

Gretchen Sorin, Distinguished Professor at S.U.N.Y. Oneonta and director of The Cooperstown Graduate Program, discusses her new book, which was the basis of a major P.B.S. documentary uncovering the history of how the automobile profoundly changed African American life.

The acclaimed historian reveals how the car―the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility―holds particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road.

April 16, 2021

Maxwell alumnus Michael Atkinson, former U. S. Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, was dismissed by President Donald Trump in April 2020. In September 2019, Atkinson alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint regarding the president’s communications with Ukraine, pressing for an investigation into Joe Biden and his son – the resulting scandal led to President Trump’s impeachment.

Atkinson speaks of his experience as Inspector General and in public service.

October 9, 2020

One hundred years after winning the right to vote, what are the current opportunities and challenges for women pursuing elected office? What are the roles they play as voters and as leaders of social movements? And what can we expect from the 2020 presidential election cycle, which includes a record number of women candidates?

This State of Democracy event features a panel discussion among leading scholars and regional political leaders: Susan Carroll, professor of political science and senior scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics; Joanie Mahoney, chief operating officer at SUNY-ESF and former Onondaga County Executive; and New York State Assemblywoman Pam Hunter. Moderator will be Kristi Andersen, Chapple Family Professor of Citizenship and Democracy Emeritus at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, Cazenovia Town Councilor and a regular panelist on WCNY’s Ivory Tower.

March 1, 2019

Can the president launch a nuclear attack without congressional approval? Is it ever a crime to criticize the president? Can states legally resist a president’s executive order?

Corey Brettschneider, professor of political science at Brown University, dives deep into the U.S. Constitution to answer questions that Americans are asking more than ever before. From the document itself and from history’s pivotal court cases, we learn why certain powers were granted to the presidency, how the Bill of Rights limits those powers, and what "we the people" can do to influence the nation’s highest public office―including, if need be, removing the person in it.

September 14, 2018

In this farewell address from Mayor Stephanie Miner, city of Syracuse, looks back on her tenure, draws lessons learned, and connects those experiences with a broader challenge facing our contemporary political culture.

October 27, 2017

Will same-sex marriage lead to more radical marriage reform? Should it? Some warn of a dramatically slippery slope from same-sex marriage toward legalizing polygamy and adult incest, and the dissolution of marriage as we know it; others embrace such changes.

Stephen Macedo, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, argues that both sides are wrong: the same principles of democratic justice that demand marriage equality for same sex couples also lend support to monogamous marriage.

March 3, 2017

Assailing the romantic folk-theory at the art of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, speakers Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters.

Achen is the Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences and professor of politics at Princeton University. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University.

April 15, 2016

In this lecture Sidney Tarrow, Emeritus Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Government at Cornell University, draws from his book War, States and Contention, which shows how "contentious politics"—disruptions of the settled political order caused by social movements—sometimes trigger, animate and guide the course of war; sometimes rise during war—and in war's wake—to change regimes or even overthrow states.

Tarrow draws on evidence from historical and contemporary cases, including revolutionary France, the United States from the Civil War to the anti—Vietnam War movement, Italy after World War I and the United States during the decade following 9/11.

November 6, 2015

Almost everyone agrees that citizenship carries with it both rights and responsibilities. But how far do the responsibilities extend? Must individuals be willing to sacrifice something important in order to be good citizens? Does good citizenship, rightly considered, necessarily involve some kind of meaningful sacrifice?

Those questions are called here, among a panel of distinguished Maxwell School faculty with a wealth of varied personal, professional and academic experiences related to the topic.

February 13, 2015

United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand addressed proposals to help more middle-class women workers gain financial security by modernizing America's outdated workplace policies.

Gillibrand was first sworn in as U.S. senator from New York in January 2009. Prior to her service in the Senate, she served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing 10 counties in upstate New York's 20th congressional district. She serves on the Senate agriculture, armed services, and aging committees.

January 17, 2014

Michael Kranish, Washington Post reporter and 1979 Syracuse University graduate (Newhouse and Maxwell), discusses his latest book, Trump Revealed, which he co-authored with Marc Fisher, senior editor at The Washington Post.

September 14, 2012