Experts to Discuss the Global Challenge of Political Polarization in University of Arizona Law Speaker Series
Jamal Greene, Jill Lepore, Lilliana Mason, Thomas Mann and Jan-Werner Müller will participate in the second edition of the Pitt Family Foundation Speaker Series.
In a political moment when the normal tension that drives democracies has given way to partisan divide, the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law will host five of the nation’s most influential voices to discuss polarization and its effect on democracy in the second iteration of the Pitt Family Foundation Speaker Series.
The free, online series will meet monthly and will be moderated by former Tucson mayor and current University of Arizona Law Professor of Practice Jonathan Rothschild. This semester’s lineup is (all times MST):
Jamal Greene – Thursday, October 28, 5:30 PM
Jamal Greene is a constitutional law expert whose scholarship focuses on the structure of legal and constitutional arguments. Greene is the author of the book, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Tearing America Apart. He has served as senior visiting scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and he currently serves as co-chair of the Oversight Board, an independent body set up to review content moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram.
Jill Lepore – Wednesday, November 17, 5:30 PM
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, and host of the podcast, The Last Archive. Her many books include These Truths: A History of the United States, an international bestseller, named one of Time Magazine's top ten non-fiction books of the decade. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award; the National Magazine Award; and, twice, for the Pulitzer Prize.
Lilliana Mason – Thursday, January 27, 5:30 PM
Lilliana Mason is assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Her research on partisan identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American social polarization has been published in journals such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio.
Thomas Mann – Wednesday, February 23, 5:30 PM
Thomas Mann is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and Resident Scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Mann has worked as a consultant to IBM and the Public Broadcasting Service, chaired the Board of Overseers of the National Election Studies, and served as an expert witness in the constitutional defense of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Mann is the co-author of The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, among several other best-selling works.
Jan-Werner Müller – Thursday, March 31, 5:30 PM
Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University, where he also directs the Project in the History of Political Thought. His previous books include What is Populism? and Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe. He writes for the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books. In his latest book Democracy Rules, Professor Muller shows that we need to re-invigorate the intermediary institutions that have been deemed essential for democracy’s success ever since the nineteenth century: political parties and free media.
Register for Jan-Werner Müller
The Pitt Family Foundation Speaker Series is part of the Participatory Democracy Initiative at the University of Arizona. The Participatory Democracy Initiative is an interdisciplinary and community-engaged program of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, the School of Government & Public Policy, and the School of Journalism.