Is American democracy at risk? Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard political scientist and coauthor of The New York Times bestseller, “How Democracies Die,” discusses how we can look to a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow to show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Professor Ziblatt’s talk is followed by a panel of Suffolk scholars –Brian Conley, Greg Fried, and Renee Landers – and is be moderated by Acting Provost Sebastian Royo. [http://www.lowellinstitute.org/](http://www.lowellinstitute.org/event/925/ "The Lowell Institute ")
Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University where he is also a resident faculty associate of the Minda de Gunzburg Cener for European Studies and Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. His research focuses on democratization, democratic breakdown, political parties, state-building, and historical political economy, with an emphasis on Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. His three books include How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), co-authored with Steve Levitsky), a New York Times best-seller, being translated into fifteen languages. He is also the author of Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which won the American Political Science Association's 2018 Woodrow Wilson Prize for the best book in government and international relations as well as three other prizes including the American Sociological Association's 2018 Barrington Moore Book Prize. His first book was Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (Princeton, 2006 [2008]). Ziblatt co-chairs (with Steve Levitsky) a new Challenges to Democracy Research Cluster (for postdocs, undergraduates, and PhD students) at Harvard's Weatherhead Center. He also directs a research program for graduate and undergraduate students at Harvard's Institute of Quantitative Social Science ("Politics Through Time") and has served as interim director of Harvard's de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. [Harvard University](https://scholar.harvard.edu/dziblatt "harvard.edu")
Brian Conley is an Associate Professor of Political Science and the program director of Applied Politics and Global Public Policy at Suffolk University. [ Suffolk.edu](https://www.suffolk.edu/college/12172.php "Suffolk.edu")
Professor Fried has taught at the University of Chicago, Boston University, California State University Los Angeles, and Suffolk University. He teaches and publishes in political philosophy, with a particular interest in responses to challenges to liberal democracy and the rise of ethno-nationalism. He also works in philosophy of law, especially law and hermeneutics; philosophy and race; practical ethics, including just war theory; public philosophy; the history of ethics; Ancient philosophy; and 20th century Continental philosophy, especially Heidegger. [Source: Boston College]
Professor Renée Landers is a Professor of Law, Faculty Director of the Health and Biomedical Law Concentration and the Masters of Science in Law: Life Sciences program at Suffolk University Law School in Boston.
Richard Taylor currently serves as chairman of the Taylor-Smith Companies, where he manages multiple real estate business entities. He has development experience in the residential, retail, and commercial sectors of the real estate industry, and is the former vice president of development at FMR Properties Inc., where he helped convert the old Commonwealth Pier in Boston Harbor into Boston’s World Trade Center.