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A community discussion about the nature and evolution of democracy in the US.

Part of the CHA's Difficult Dialogues: Community Conversations series and Colorado Chautauqua's ��series.

Event Description

Is American democracy broken, as some commenters suggest, or is it deeply imperiled and potentially on the verge of becoming so, as others do? Given what are frequently received as frustrations with or threats to democracy—of voter suppression, “post-truth” politics, the normalization of political violence, the erosion of democratic guardrails, and the intensification of partisan polarization—must we now be resigned to charting the decline and fall of democratic norms and institutions, viewing each election with anxiety and dread as if it might be our last? Or is it still possible to reinvigorate democratic norms and institutions, and in so doing provide an antidote to such frustrations and threats? This community dialogue aims to explore not only what community members may perceive as threatening to democracy or indicative of its fragility or decline, but also to explore how we got here and where we might go from here, especially with regard to reinvigorating some of the norms and institutions of American democracy.

Moderator: Steve Vanderheiden received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001, and joined the CU-Boulder faculty in 2007 after six years at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He specializes in normative political theory and environmental politics, and has published on topics ranging from Rousseau’s social thought to SUVs and democratic theory. In addition to graduate seminars in political theory, Vanderheiden teaches the introductory Western Political Thought survey course, Politics & Literature, Liberalism and Its Critics, and Environmental Political Theory.

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