We commemorate Black History Month and celebrate a new podcast from Virginia Public Media that talks about Reconstruction from the perspective of African Americans who fought for freedom and the right to be citizens of American democracy.
Seizing Freedom is a new podcast from Virginia Public Media that tells the stories of Black Americans during Reconstruction who fought for the everyday freedoms that many of us take for granted, like the right to decide how to make a living or which causes to support. Drawing from host Kidada Williams's research on historical records of formerly enslaved people, the show brings to light voices that have been muted throughout American history.
Williams is associate professor of history at Wayne State University, author of They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I, and editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence.
The clumsy journey to antiracism
The ongoing struggle for civil rights
The U.S. Capitol insurrection broke open a lot of conversations that had long been simmering under the surface about social media and democracy. Michal and Chris discuss this inflection point and our guest, Sinan Aral, shares ideas for how we might move forward.
Sinan Aral has spent two decades studying how social media impacts our lives, from how we think about politics to how we find a romantic partner. He argues that we're now at the crossroads of a decade of techno-utopianism followed by a decade of techno-dystopianism. How to reconcile the promise and peril of social media is one of the biggest questions facing democracy today.
Aral is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT, and Data Science at MIT; director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; and head of MIT’s Social Analytics Lab. He is the author of The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health — And How We Must Adapt.
Drawing on two decades of his own research and business experience, Aral goes under the hood of the biggest, most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse.
Free speech from the Founding Fathers to Twitter
Alexei Navalny has been a figure in Russian opposition for years, but garnered international attention recently though social media and what's widely believed to be an assassination attempt by the Russian government in the fall. This week, we unpack the complicated nature of Russian democracy and how the U.S. and other countries should respond — or not — to what's happening there now.
Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a non-resident allow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He is the author of two books on American history and culture, and he has published articles and essays on the transatlantic relationship, on U.S.–Russian relations, and on international affairs in The New Republic, The New York Times, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
This episode was produced in partnership with Out of Order, the podcast from the German Marshall Fund of the United States and one of our parters in The Democracy Group podcast network.
Ballot initiatives are designed to give the people a voice and a means to work around legislative politics, which has to be good for democracy, right? Our guests this week provide a different take on the story we're often told about direct democracy and civic engagement.
From gerrymandering to ranked-choice voting to expanding voting rights, the ballot initiative has been essential to expanding and reforming democracy in recent years. However, the initiative has also been used to constrain minority rights and push the public to act on polarizing issues like the death penalty and immigration.
Ted Lascher and Joshua Dyck are the authors of Initiatives Without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy's Secondary Effects. In the book, they develop and test a theory that can explain the evidence that the ballot initiative process fails to provide the civic benefits commonly claimed for it, and the evidence that it increases political participation. Ultimately, they argue that the basic function of direct democracy is to create more conflict in society — something that runs counter to the way initiatives are often framed by scholars and democracy reformers.
Lascher is Professor of Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Sacramento. Dyck is Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Initiatives Without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy's Secondary Effects
The democracy rebellion happening in states across the U.S.
Winning the "democracy lottery"
Extreme maps, extreme politics
Despite ongoing threats of violence, the wheels of democracy continue to turn, and in 2021 that means redistricting. States will draw new electoral maps this year using data from the 2020 Census.
Our guest this week has spent the past decade covering attempts by politicians to draw those maps to their advantage in a practice known as gerrymandering. He's also covered the groups of citizens across the country who pushed back against them to win some major reforms that will make the process look different now than it did in 2010.
David Daley is a journalist and author of Unrigged: How Citizens are Battling Back to Save Democracy. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and lives in Massachusetts.
Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy
Fair Districts PA on judicial gerrymandering
One state's fight for fair maps
Next-generation democracy: An interview with high school student Kyle Hynes, who won Pennsylvania's citizen mapmaking contest.
This episode was recorded on Friday, January 8, 2021, two days after the day that many of the things we've talked about on this show came to a head — political and epistemic polarization, delgitimation of the opposition, degradation of democratic norms, racial inequity, and many other factors.
Democracy Works hosts Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, and Candis Watts Smith reflect on what happened and what's next for American democracy. They also discus whether it's possible to learn from this moment and what guideposts they'll be looking for to determine whether all the talk about protecting and restoring democracy we've heard since the attack will translate into action.
Statement from Michael Berkman and Chris Beem on January 6, 2021 attack
Andrew Sullivan on democracy's double-edged sword
This episode was recorded on December 15, 2020, the day after the Electoral College voted to confirm Joe Biden as the next United States President. However, some Republicans refuse to accept the result and vow to continue fighting the result until Inauguration Day. Michael, Chris, and Candis discuss what these challenges mean for the long-term health and legitimacy of American elections and American democracy.
They also discuss damage to the institutions that comprise America's liberal democracy and what it will take to repair them moving forward. Finally, they touch on increasing polarization and whether a generational shift will change the dynamics over time.
This our final new episode of the year. We'll be on a winter break for the next few weeks, during which time we'll be rebroadcasting some episodes from our back catalog that you might have missed. If there are any guests or topics you would like us to cover in 2021, please email democracyinst@psu.edu to share your ideas.
Thank you to our colleagues at WPSU for helping us produce the show every week — Andy Grant, Emily Reddy, Kristine Allen, Anne Danahy, Jen Bortz, Chris Kugler, and Mark Stitzer.
From our team to your and your family, best wishes for a happy holiday season!
Marijuana legalization might be one of the few issues that can transcend political polarization. Medical and recreational use has passed in red and blue states alike, largely direct democracy initiatives. Our guests this week explain what's happening and where things might go moving forward.
Lee Hannah and Dan Mallinson have been studying marijuana policy for several years and watching as initiatives pass in states across the country. We discuss how the process of organizing around a ballot initiative has changed as the marijuana industry grows, and whether the growing number of states legalizing marijuana will lead to changes at the federal level.
Hannah is associate professor of political science at Wright State University and Mallinson is assistant professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg. Both received their Ph.Ds from Penn State, where they worked with Democracy Works host Michael Berkman.
This episode hits many of the items on the Democracy Works bingo card — federalism, states as laboratories of democracy, ballot initiatives, social justice, and more.
The democracy rebellion happening in states across the U.S.
Using the tools of democracy to address economic inequality
Many, many articles, books, documentaries — and even podcasts — have been produced over the past four years to explain who Donald Trump's base is and what motivates people to vote for and otherwise support him. Our guest this week offers answers to these questions that are grounded in social science and political psychology.
John Hibbing is the Foundation Regent University Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska. He studies the manner in which these biological variations mitigate the way in which individuals respond to politically relevant environmental occurrences. His latest book is The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump's Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era.
The book draws from an original national survey that includes over 1,000 strong Trump supporters and Hibbing's own experience at a Trump rally in the Midwest. Hibbing argues Trump's base is driven by the desire for security, not fear or authoritarianism as others claim. In the book, and in this interview, Hibbing also provides insight into the approaches likely to increase levels of political civility in the future.
Hibbing's University of Nebraska faculty page
We are conducting a listener survey in partnership with our colleagues in The Democracy Group podcast network. Take a few minutes to help us learn more about how we can make epodes that will better serve you in 2021 and beyond and receive a Democracy Group notebook. Take the survey.
Journalist Salena Zito on Trump voters and her book "The Great Revolt"
Jonathan Haidt on psychology and political polarization
The 2020 election left many pundits and pollsters scratching their heads about the increased support for Donald Trump among Latino voters. While these conversations seem new every election cycle, our guest this week argues they are part of a much larger story that goes back generations.
Because of decades of investment and political courtship, as well as a nuanced and varied cultural identity, the Republican party has had a much longer and stronger bond with Hispanics. How is this possible for a party so associated with draconian immigration and racial policies?
Geraldo Cadava is a professor of History and Latina and Latino Studies at Northwestern University. His book,"The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity from Nixon to Trump," examines little-understood history of Hispanic Americans with a cultural study of how post–World War II Republican politicians actively courted the Hispanic vote.
In the book and in this interview, Cadava offers insight into the complicated dynamic between Latino liberalism and conservatism, which, when studied together, shine a crucial light on a rapidly-changing demographic that will impact American elections for years to come.
Finally, we are conducting a listener survey in partnership with our colleagues in The Democracy Group podcast network. Take a few minutes to help us learn more about how we can make epodes that will better serve you in 2021 and beyond and receive a Democracy Group notebook. Take the survey.
The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity from Nixon to Trump
Latino immigrants and the changing makeup of American democracy
We are part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.