Making sense of the post-Trump political landscape…
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are struggling to defend the political center against illiberal extremes. America must put forward policies that can reverse our political and governmental dysfunction, advance the social welfare of all citizens, combat climate change, and confront the other forces that threaten our common interests.
The podcast focuses on current politics seen in the context of our nation’s history and the personal biographies of the participants. It will highlight the policy initiatives of non-partisan think tanks and institutions, while drawing upon current academic scholarship and political literature from years past — including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1949 classic “The Vital Center.”
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Making sense of the post-Trump political landscape…
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are struggling to defend the political center against illiberal extremes. America must put forward policies that can reverse our political and governmental dysfunction, advance the social welfare of all citizens, combat climate change, and confront the other forces that threaten our common interests.
The podcast focuses on current politics seen in the context of our nation’s history and the personal biographies of the participants. It will highlight the policy initiatives of non-partisan think tanks and institutions, while drawing upon current academic scholarship and political literature from years past — including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1949 classic “The Vital Center.”
Grove describes his experiences with finding both resistance and innovation in state and local government, and the perspective that gave him on Elon Musk’s DOGE attempt to reinvent government along Silicon Valley lines.
In this podcast discussion, Holter talks about how he became interested in Kempton’s work, how Kempton’s writings provide an overview of and window into American life in the twentieth century, and why he wanted to make Kempton’s work available to a new generation of readers.
Misha Chellam, a leader in the Abundance movement and co-founder of the Abundance Network, joins The Vital Center to discuss how YIMBYism, state capacity, and Progress Studies relate to abundance. Chellam analyzes the successful alliances of growth-focused Abundants and good-government moderates in San Francisco. He also envisions future Abundance policies that expand beyond California and adapt to meet local needs and priorities.
In this podcast conversation, Postrel analyzes different approaches to what she considers to be the linked causes of abundance and progress and the basic political division between advocates of stasis and dynamism.
Ehrenhalt discusses what both the political left and right miss about the 1950s, but acknowledges the difficulty of recovering communitarian values in the present era.
Worthen discusses not only her studies of charismatic leaders but also her previous work on religious belief, the Grand Strategy program at Yale, and her own conversion to evangelical Christianity.
In this podcast conversation, Matt Zwolinski discusses his investigations into the intellectual history of libertarianism as well as his analysis of the longstanding tensions between radical and reactionary elements within the philosophy.
In this podcast discussion, Grossmann and Hopkins argue that educated liberals are winning the culture war, particularly with regard to the secularization of American public life.
In this podcast interview, the former Harvard president discusses the sources of student and faculty radicalization in the 1960s, the parallels between the ‘60s campus protests and those of today, and the financial and institutional difficulties that beset many of the country’s leading universities.
In this podcast discussion, Jonathan Rauch argues that Protestantism in America increasingly has taken on forms that ended up importing religious zeal into secular politics and exporting politics into religion.
Why can’t America do big things anymore? Marc Dunkelman, a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, addresses this question in his new book, Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Get It Back.
Many Democratic voters — and not a few pundits — have found the 2024 presidential election outcome to be profoundly puzzling and disorienting: How could so many minorities and working-class Americans have voted for Donald Trump?
The 2024 U.S. election was to a large extent driven by voter frustrations with what seems to many to be a sluggish economy and dysfunctional government that no longer delivers for its citizens as it used to.
Norman Holmes Pearson, who in the middle years of the twentieth century was a professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, is now a largely forgotten figure — and someone who was never that well known during his lifetime.
In this podcast discussion, Schlozman and Rosenfeld discuss how the hollowing-out of the Republican Party has made it vulnerable to Donald Trump’s hostile populist takeover; the stronger party establishment of decades past did a better job of erecting guardrails against right-wing extremism and would have prevented the party’s nomination from going to a personalist leader like Trump.
In this podcast interview, Zivan analyzes both the pragmatic foundations of centrism but also its underlying ideological framework, which rests particularly on an unswerving commitment to liberal democracy and its institutions.
In this podcast discussion, DiResta relates how the viral qualities of social media have transformed right-wing influencers into what she calls, in the title of her new book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.
Edward C. Banfield (1916-99), the conservative political scientist who spent most of his career at Harvard University, was one of the most eminent and controversial scholars of the twentieth century. His best-known work, The Unheavenly City (1970), was a deeply informed but unsparing criticism of Great Society-era attempts to alleviate urban poverty.
Making sense of the post-Trump political landscape…
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are struggling to defend the political center against illiberal extremes. America must put forward policies that can reverse our political and governmental dysfunction, advance the social welfare of all citizens, combat climate change, and confront the other forces that threaten our common interests.
The podcast focuses on current politics seen in the context of our nation’s history and the personal biographies of the participants. It will highlight the policy initiatives of non-partisan think tanks and institutions, while drawing upon current academic scholarship and political literature from years past — including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1949 classic “The Vital Center.”
