The Atlantic and the National Constitution Center explore the health of the building blocks of our democracy. In a time of fake news and echo chambers, impassioned tweets rather than reasoned arguments, and declining trust in institutions, how can we protect democratic debate, the rule of law, and the constitutional ideals that have defined America since its founding?
Participants
- Ruth Marcus is deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post. She also writes a weekly column. Marcus has been with The Post since 1984. She joined the national staff in 1986, covering campaign finance, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court and the White House. From 1999 through 2002, she served as deputy national editor, supervising reporters who covered money and politics, Congress, the Supreme Court and other national issues. She joined the editorial board in 2003 and began writing a regular column in 2006. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007.
- Ibram X. Kendi is a New York Times bestselling author and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. A professor of history and international relations and a frequent public speaker, Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and CBS News. He is the author of The Black Campus Movement, which won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize, and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His third book, How to be an Antiracist, debuted at #2 on the New York Times Bestseller List in August 2019 and made several Best Books of 2019 lists.
- Jeffrey Goldberg is editor in chief of The Atlantic, where he was previously a national correspondent. A former Middle East and Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, Goldberg has corresponded for The New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine, written for The Forward, and was a Jerusalem Post columnist. He authored Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror. Goldberg received the 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamic terrorism and an Overseas Press Club award for best human-rights reporting, among other honors. He’s been a Syrkin Fellow in Letters of the Jerusalem Foundation and a public-policy scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
- 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.
Panel Two: Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Faith in Government
- Alex Wagner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, co-host of SHOWTIME's The Circus, and special correspondent for CBS News.
- Jeffrey Goldberg is editor in chief of The Atlantic, where he was previously a national correspondent. A former Middle East and Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, Goldberg has corresponded for The New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine, written for The Forward, and was a Jerusalem Post columnist. He authored Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror. Goldberg received the 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamic terrorism and an Overseas Press Club award for best human-rights reporting, among other honors. He’s been a Syrkin Fellow in Letters of the Jerusalem Foundation and a public-policy scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
- Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organizatin 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.
Panel Three: In the Senate
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Jeff Flake is a Republican U.S. Senator for the State of Arizona. He is the author of the New York Times best seller Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. While in the Senate, Senator Flake has chaired the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology & the Law, which sits at the intersection of innovation and regulation. He has also chaired the Africa Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, where he passed landmark legislation on wildlife trafficking and democratic governance. Prior to his election to the Senate, Flake was a six term congressman, served as executive director of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, and directed the Foundation for Democracy in Namibia during that nation’s transition to independence.
- Chris Coons is a Democratic U.S. Senator for the State of Delaware. Within the United States Senate, Coons serves on multiple committees, including: the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on Ethics, the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Coons has been recognized for his bipartisanship and effectiveness, recieving the Bipartisan Policy Center's Legislative Action Award in 2017, and being ranked in the top three most productive Senators of both parties by the independent congressional tracking website, GovTrack.
- Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organizatin 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.
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