Revitalizing Democracy in Uncertain Times with Prof. Bruce Ackerman and Jonathan Alter

event_image Event offered by:
Foreign Policy Association

Event Details

Date:
Thursday, December 5, 2024
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM 
Location:
Harvard Club of New York City
35 West 44th Street
New York , NY
Event type
Lecture / Panel  

Event Description

Please join the Foreign Policy Association for a moderated discussion on "Revitalizing Democracy in Uncertain Times" on Thursday, December 5th, 2024 at the Harvard Club of New York City. We will be joined by Prof. Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale Law School and author of The Postmodern Predicament: Existential Challenges of the Twenty-First Century, and Jonathan Alter, award winning author and political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Copies of The Postmodern Predicament will be available after the lecture. 

The lecture will begin at 6:00pm and will be followed by a reception. To register for this event, you can use the eventbrite link above or contact President's Office at [email protected] 

 

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Event Speakers

    • Bruce Ackerman - Speaker
      Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale Law School

      Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, and the author of nineteen books in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy. He is a Commander of the French Order of Merit, a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The American Philosophical Society has awarded him the Henry Phillips Prize for lifetime achievement in Jurisprudence, especially noting his exploration of the great turning points in American constitutional history in his three volume series, We the People. His award-winning early work, Social Justice in the Liberal State, continues to provoke contemporary controversy. His scholarship has had a global impact. He has been named a Leading Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine, and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Trieste, Italy, for his contributions to comparative constitutional law. Before the Next Attack (2006) served as a basis for the reform of the French constitution dealing with emergency powers. The Stakeholder Society (with Anne Alstott) has served as the basis for reform initiatives in Brazil, Britain, and elsewhere that guarantee every person a fair share of the nation’s wealth by providing them with a “citizen stake” consisting of a substantial cash grant as they reach maturity. His recent book, Revolutionary Constitutions (Harvard: 2019) puts the worldwide constitutional crisis in historical perspective by comparing the postwar experience of countries as different as France, India, Iran, Italy, Israel, Poland, South Africa, and the United States — and suggests that these nations have a good deal to learn from one another in confronting the current assault on checks-and-balances. His arguments have generated a world-ranging discussion, provoking the publication of four Symposium volumes in which leading academics and jurists from around the world have greatly enriched comparative constitutional understanding. For the relevant volumes, see the curriculum vitae. More recently, he has published The Postmodern Predicament (Yale: 2024), dealing with the fundamental ways the internet revolution is transforming the struggle for a meaningful life — from the very first moment that a youngster picks up his first cellphone. Ackerman argues that 20th-century existentialists, like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, offer crucial insights into the shattering challenges of the internet age — and follows their lead in proposing a series of decisive reforms that promise to reduce — if not eliminate -- the clear and present danger to constitutional democracy in the postmodern world.

    • Jonathan Alter - Speaker
      Author and Political Analyst on MSNBC

      Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, political analyst, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer and radio host.

      Alter’s most recent book is “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.” (2020), which received uniformly favorable reviews. His earlier books include three New York Times bestsellers: “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies” (2013), “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” (2010) and “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope” (2006), also one of the Times’ “Notable Books” of the year.

      A former senior editor and columnist at Newsweek, Alter is a longtime political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.  He co-produced and co-directed the HBO documentary “Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists,” which won the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding Historical Documentary. In 2013-2014, he was an executive producer of “Alpha House,“ a comedy on Amazon.

      Over the years, Alter has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Monthly, the New Yorker, Bloomberg, the Daily Beast and other publications. In 2021, he launched a weekly Substack newsletter called “OLD GOATS, Ruminating with Friends,” which includes frequent columns and his conversations with accomplished people of wisdom and experience. Since 2016, he has hosted “Alter Family Politics“ each week on Sirius XM, 102 with his three adult children.

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