Is democracy in trouble? Many Americans believe so: recent polls consistently rank "threats to democracy" as one of respondents' top concerns. In the new book The Civic Bargain, authors Brook Manville and Josiah Ober look to history for examples of democracies under threat. By examining the ways in which historical democracies confronted their own …

The story often told is that rural America is in decline, and that rural Americans are resentful of their suburban and urban counterparts. But Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues in her new book The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means For Our Country that rural Americans and rural America are in many ways actually …

Civics for Life and the O'Connor Institute welcome Professor Cristina Rodríguez and Mr. Adam White as they join host Liam Julian, director of Public Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, for an online conversation and share diverse perspectives on the Future of the Court. Rodríguez and White both served as members of the Presidential Commiss…

Do open primaries and ranked-choice voting have the potential to improve American elections, or will they create more problems than they solve? Kevin Meyer, former lieutenant governor of Alaska; Steve Goldstein, executive director of Save Democracy AZ; and Jaime Molera, former Arizona superintendent of public instruction join the O'Connor Institute…

Civics for Life and the O'Connor Institute welcome Jed Perl as he joins Liam Julian, director of Public Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, for a discussion on the relationship between art and society, the artist’s role in society, and whether art and artists have definite social and political responsibilities. Perl is the author of nine b…

Civics for Life and the O'Connor Institute welcome Professor Nick Seabrook as he joins Liam Julian, director of Public Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, for an online conversation on Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering, according to Webster, is "to divide or arrange (an area) into political units to give special advantages to one group when v…

What is the museum’s role in society? How does – and can – the museum function as a civic space? Dr. Anthea Hartig, the first woman director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, recently sat down with Civics for Life to briefly discuss these and other questions You can find us at: https://civicsforlife.org/ Follow u…

Emancipation in America is often presented as a single and singular undertaking. But Professor Kris Manjapra's new book, Black Ghost of Empire, complicates that story by situating America's national emancipation in a long line of global emancipations--including the first emancipations, which occurred in America's North in the late 18th century--tha…

In his book The Quest for Character, Massimo Pigliucci asks: can good character be taught? Through an exploration of Greek and Roman philosophy, and especially the interaction of Socrates and Alcibiades, Pigliucci helps us understand what makes a good leader, and how we can educate others, and ourselves, to be better people and citizens. You can fi…

The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy presents a Civics for Life Conversation with author and historian Claire Rydell Arcenas and Liam Julian, director of Public Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute. In her book America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life, Rydell Arcenas seeks to better understand and i…