Yascha Mounk, Writer, academic and public speaker
Yascha Mounk is a writer, academic and public speaker known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy.
Born in Germany to Polish parents, Yascha received his BA in History from Trinity College, Cambridge, and his PhD in Government from Harvard University. He is now an Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds appointments in both the School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute. Yascha is also a Senior Advisor at Protect Democracy, a Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance, a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Reiss Center on Law and Security, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Yascha has written three books: Stranger in My Own Country – A Jewish Family in Modern Germany, a memoir about Germany’s fraught attempts to deal with its past; The Age of Responsibility – Luck, Choice and the Welfare State, which argues that a growing obsession with the concept of individual responsibility has transformed western welfare states; and The People versus Democracy – Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, which explains the causes of the populist rise and investigates how to renew liberal democracy. His latest book has been translated into eleven languages, and hailed as one of 2018’s Best Books of the Year by multiple publications, including the Financial Times. A Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, Yascha regularly writes for newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Foreign Affairs. He is also is also a regular columnist or contributor for major international publications including Die Zeit, La Repubblica, l’Express, Folha de Sao Paolo, Kultura Liberalna, and Letras Libres.
To get a better sense of Yascha’s work, listen to his podcast, read his weekly column, or follow him on Facebookand Twitter. Or check out these recent profiles of him and reviews of his work:
Kathleen Belew, Author, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
Kathleen Belew is a historian, author, and teacher. She specializes in the history of the present. She spent ten years researching and writing her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018, paperback 2019). In it, she uses previously classified FBI documents and vivid personal testimonies to explore how white power activists created a social movement through a common story about betrayal by the government, war, and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. By uniting Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead, and other groups, the movement mobilized and carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. This movement was never adequately confronted, and remains a presence in American life.
Belew has spoken about Bring the War Home in a wide variety of places, including The Rachel Maddow Show, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, AC 360 with Anderson Cooper, Frontline, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered. Her work has featured prominently in documentaries such as Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us (ABC) and Documenting Hate: New American Nazis (Frontline).
This research has received the support of the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Jacob K. Javits Foundation. Belew earned her BA in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. She earned a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University. Belew has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2019-20), Northwestern University, and Rutgers University. Her award-winning teaching centers on the broad themes of history of the present, conservatism, race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war.
Eric Liu, Co-Founder and CEO of Citizen University
Eric Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Citizen University. He also directs the Aspen Institute’s Citizenship & American Identity Program. He is the author of several books, including The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker; The Gardens of Democracy (co-authored with Nick Hanauer); You’re More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen; and his most recent, Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy. Eric served as a White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and later as the President’s deputy domestic policy adviser. He has served as a board member of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Washington State Board of Education, and the Seattle Public Library and is a co-founder of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. A regular contributor to the Atlantic, Eric can be found on Twitter @ericpliu.
Ganesh Sitaraman, Professor, Vanderbilt Law School
Ganesh Sitaraman is a Professor of Law and also Director, Program in Law and Government at Vanderbilt University. Ganesh Sitaraman teaches and writes about constitutional law, the regulatory state, economic policy, democracy, and foreign affairs.
Professor Sitaraman has been a longtime advisor to Elizabeth Warren, including serving as a senior advisor on her 2020 presidential campaign, her senior counsel in the Senate, and her policy director during her 2012 Senate campaign. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the co-founder of the Great Democratic Initiative, which develops bold, innovative and detailed policy plans. He has been profiled in The New York Times and Politico for his work at the nexus of politics and ideas.
Sitaraman is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and a member of the American Law Institute, and he serves on the boards of The American Prospect, the American Constitution Society, and Foreign Policy for America. He was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2018, and he was a visiting assistant professor at Yale Law School in 2016. At Vanderbilt, he was awarded a Chancellor’s Award for Research and a Chancellor’s Faculty Fellowship. Before joining Vanderbilt, Sitaraman was the Public Law Fellow and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, a research fellow at the Counterinsurgency Training Center – Afghanistan in Kabul, and a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Sitaraman’s most recent book is
The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America (Basic Books, 2019). He is also the author or co-author of
The Public Option, written with Ann Alstott in 2019;
The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republicwhich was one of
The New York Times’ 100 notable books of 2017; and
The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars, which won the
2013 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.
An Eagle Scout and a Truman Scholar, Sitaraman earned his A.B. in government magna cum laude from Harvard College, a master’s degree in political thought from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Geoffrey Mearns, President, Ball State University
President Geoffrey S. Mearns serves as the 17th president of Ball State University. After joining the University in May 2017, President Mearns helped to develop a new strategic plan. Destination 2040: Our Flight Path establishes a long-range vision for the University that sets priorities across five key areas: undergraduate excellence, graduate education and lifetime learning, community engagement and impact, scholarship and societal impact, and institutional and inclusive excellence.
During his tenure, President Mearns has pursued initiatives that have produced the largest freshman class in history and increased alumni engagement and fundraising. President Mearns has also strengthened the University’s relationship with the community, most notably through its innovative partnership with Muncie Community Schools.
President Mearns earned his undergraduate degree in English from Yale University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. After a legal career that included serving as a federal prosecutor, President Mearns held academic and administrative roles at Cleveland State University, and then he served as president of Northern Kentucky University. He and his wife, Jennifer, have five children.
Pamela Karlan, Professor, Stanford Law School
A productive scholar and an award-winning teacher, Pamela S. Karlan is co-director of the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the Court. One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (where she received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the department’s highest award for employee performance – as part of the team responsible for implementing the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor). Professor Karlan is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles.
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Karlan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and the American Law Institute.
Neil Kinkopf, Professor, George State University College of Law
Neil Kinkopf is Professor of Law at the Georgia State University College of Law. He has also taught at the law schools at Case Western Reserve and Duke Universities. Neil teaches courses on constitutional law, civil procedure, and legislation. His research and writing focuses on separation of powers, with an emphasis on presidential power. The fourth edition of his book, Separation of Powers Law, (co-authored with Peter Shane and Harold Bruff) was published last winter. Professor Kinkopf has also held appointments in the Office of Legal Counsel and the Office of Legal Policy, both in the Department of Justice.
Paul Pierson, John Gross Professor of Political Science, University of California Berkeley
Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Pierson’s teaching and research includes the fields of American politics and public policy, comparative political economy, and social theory. His most recent books are Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (Yale University Press 2005), co-authored by Jacob Hacker, Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (Princeton University Press 2004), and The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism (Princeton University Press 2007), which was co-edited with Theda Skocpol, and Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Simon and Schuster 2010), also co-authored by Jacob Hacker. Pierson is an active commentator on public affairs, whose writings have recently appeared in such outlets as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New Republic.
Pierson is also the author of Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge 1994), which won the American Political Science Association’s 1995 prize for the best book on American national politics. His article “Path Dependence, Increasing Returns and the Study of Politics†won the APSA’s prize for the best article in the American Political Science Review in 2000, as well as the Aaron Wildavsky Prize for its enduring contribution to the field of public policy, awarded by the Public Policy Section of the APSA in 2011. He has served on the editorial boards of The American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, and The Annual Review of Political Science. From 2007 to 2010 he served as Chair of the Berkeley political science department.
David Orr, State of American Democracy Founder and Co-Editor of Democracy Unchained
David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus and senior advisor to the president of Oberlin College. He is a founding editor of the journal Solutions, and founder of the Oberlin Project, a collaborative effort of the city of Oberlin, Oberlin College, and private and institutional partners to improve the resilience, prosperity, and sustainability of Oberlin. Orr is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and coeditor of three others. He has authored over 200 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications.
In the past 25 years, he has served as a board member or advisor to eight foundations and on the boards of many organizations, including the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Currently he is a trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado and the Children and Nature Network. He has been awarded eight honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, and a Visionary Leadership Award from Second Nature. Orr is a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. While at Oberlin, he spearheaded the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past 30 years,” and as “one of 30 milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy and was instrumental in funding the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center.
