The New York State Writers Institute has announced “Rebuilding the Republic,” a months-long series of events addressing many of the urgent issues we face today — including the threat of political insurrection, racist violence, economic inequity, and social strife — and the prospect of emerging a better nation from adversity.
The program kicks off February 23rd with Eddie Glaude [link], a leading public intellectual and author of the upcoming book Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.
On Thursday, February 25th, Sam Jackson, a professor in UAlbany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity, will discuss his new book, Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group.
Upcoming “Rebuilding the Republic” events will feature:
Jill Lepore, one of the great American historians of her generation, who will discuss data mining and voter manipulation.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat will discuss his upcoming book The Decadent Society: America Before and After the Pandemic, and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert will discuss his documentary Against All Odds: The Fight for a Black Middle Class.
In partnership with the National Death Penalty Archive at the University at Albany, a discussion on “The Past and Future of Criminal Justice” will feature Maurice Chammah, author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.
“Socialism in the Age of AOC and Bernie Sanders” with Bhaskar Sunkara, author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality and Kristen Ghodsee, author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence. Sunkara and Ghodsee will be interviewed by New York Almanack founder John Warren.
Mark Bittman, one of America’s most influential food writers, author of Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal will share his thoughts on why America needs a revolution in its food industry.
A discussion titled “The Front Lines of Hate” will feature Kathleen Belew, author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America and Seyward Darby, author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism.
“The Psychology of Terrorists” will feature noted psychologist John Horgan, whose book The Psychology of Terrorism has been published in more than a dozen languages around the world.
“Is White Nationalism Becoming Mainstream?” with Alexandra Stern, a recognized authority on the history of eugenics and the author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination, and Cas Mudde, the author of The Far Right Today, a concise overview of far-right politics in the U.S. and across the world.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, one of the first undocumented students at Harvard, and the author of The Undocumented Americans, a 2020 National Book Award finalist for Nonfiction.
All events are free and open to the public. Video events will premiere at 11 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and will be available for viewing at your convenience thereafter.
More information can be found at the Writers Institute webpage.
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