Micheal Sandel: Democracys Discontent

Please join Michael Sandel and panelists Archon Fung, Jennifer Hochschild, and Brandon Terry for a discussion of Sandel’s forthcoming book, Democracy’s Discontent. Dialogue moderated by Ryan Enos. 

This event is open to all Harvard ID holders. Registration is requested, but not required to attend. To register see sign up link at bottom.

Please note new room, this event will now be held in the Tsai Auditorium, S010 (next door to the Belfer, S020). 

Michael Sandel’s influential and widely debated book Democracy’s Discontent, was first published in 1996. The market faith was eroding the common life. A rising sense of disempowerment was likely to provoke backlash, he wrote, from those who would “shore up borders, harden the distinction between insiders and outsiders, and promise a politics to ‘take back our culture and take back our country,’ to ‘restore our sovereignty’ with a vengeance.”

Now, a quarter century later, Sandel updates his classic work for an age when democracy’s discontent has hardened into a country divided against itself. In this new edition, he extends his account of America’s civic struggles from the 1990s to the present. He shows how Democrats and Republicans alike embraced a version of finance-driven globalization that created a society of winners and losers and fueled the toxic politics of our time. In a work celebrated when first published as “a remarkable fusion of philosophical and historical scholarship” (Alan Brinkley), Sandel recalls moments in the American past when the country found ways to hold economic power to democratic account. To reinvigorate democracy, Sandel argues in a stirring new epilogue, we need to reconfigure the economy and empower citizens as participants in a shared public life.

Panelists and Moderator
 

Michael Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University. His writings—on justice, ethics, democracy, and markets–have been translated into more than 30 languages. Sandel’s books relate enduring themes of political philosophy to the most vexing moral and civic questions of our time. They include The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?; What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets;  Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?;  The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering;  Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics;  Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy; and Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. 

Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy.

Jennifer Hochschild is the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government at Harvard University, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Harvard College Professor. She studies and teaches about the intersection of American politics and political philosophy – particularly in areas of race, ethnicity, and immigration – and is the author and co-author of numerous books, including recently, Do Facts Matter?: Information and Misinformation in American Politics.

Brandon Terry is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. His current research project – tentatively titled, The Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement – sits at the intersection of political theory, history, and African-American Studies. He has written or provided commentary for NPR, WGBH, The Huffington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Point, The Nation, Time, MTV News, and more.
 

Ryan Enos is Professor of Government at Harvard, and Director, Center for American Political Studies. He studies the intersection of psychology, geography, and politics in the United States and has published extensively on intergroup relations, elections, and other topics. His work and commentary also frequently appears in popular national media outlets and his 2017 book, The Space Between Us, was called “among the most important and fascinating books about the uniquely psychological consequences of political geography ever written.” 

This event is hosted by the Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) and co-sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Registration Closed