Live at the National Constitution Center

Reviving Trust and Rebuilding Institutions

May 05, 2020

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Conservative intellectual Yuval Levin discusses the decline in trust in American institutions as told in his new book A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. He shares his findings on Americans’ growing distrust in institutions created by the Constitution—like Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court—as well as the press, political parties, universities, and religious institutions. He shares possible explanations for that distrust, its potential impact, and possible solutions. Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and he joined National Constitution Center President Jeffrey Rosen via Zoom.

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Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. Levin is the founding and current editor of National Affairs, a senior editor of The New Atlantis, and a contributing editor to National Review. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, including A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream.

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.

This episode was engineered by Greg Scheckler with help from Jackie McDermott and produced by Jackie McDermott and Tanaya Tauber.

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