In today’s polarized political climate, how can Americans foster constructive conversations and compromise across the political spectrum to address the nation’s most pressing issues? Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, psychologist and author of The Two Moralities: Conservatives, Liberals, and the Roots of Our Political Divide; Matthew Levendusky, political scientist and author of Our Common Bonds: Using What Americans Share to Help Bridge the Partisan Divide; and Kenji Yoshino, legal scholar and author of Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice, join for a conversation exploring the roots of America’s political divide, various strategies for overcoming partisan gridlock, and how and why to engage in difficult discussions to secure the future of democracy. Thomas Donnelly, chief content officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
This program is made possible through the generous support of Citizen Travelers, the nonpartisan civic engagement initiative of Travelers.
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Ronnie Janoff-Bulman is professor emerita of psychology and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the former editor of the journal Psychological Inquiry, and her new book is The Two Moralities: Conservatives, Liberals, and the Roots of Our Political Divide.
Matthew Levendusky is professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds the Stephen and Mary Baran Chair in the Institutions of Democracy at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. His books include The Partisan Sort, How Partisan Media Polarize America, and most recently, Our Common Bonds: Using What American Share to Overcome the Partisan Divide.
Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law and the faculty director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. He is the author and coauthor of several books, including Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice.
Thomas Donnelly is chief content officer at the National Constitution Center. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, The Two Moralities: Conservatives, Liberals, and the Roots of Our Political Divide
- Kristen de Groot, “Matthew Levendusky’s Our Common Bonds,” Penn Today
- Matthew Levendusky, Our Common Bonds: Using What Americans Share to Help Bridge the Partisan Divide
- “Matt Levendusky on Our Common Bonds and Bridging Our Differences,” Annenberg Public Policy Center (2023)
- "What is affective polarization?" Politics in Question podcast
- Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice
- Matthew Yglesias, "The Great Awokening," Vox
- Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
- Marta Zaraska, "The Genes of Left and Right," Scientific American
- Drew Desilver, "The polarization in today’s Congress has roots that go back decades," Pew Research Center
- 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis
- Global Party Survey (2019)
- Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, Deliberation Day
- Andrew Dobson, Listening for Democracy: Recognition, Representation, Reconciliation
- Kristie Dotson, "Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing," Hypatia
- Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias
- Charles A. Dorison, Julia A. Minson and Todd Rogers, "Selective Exposure Partly Relies on Faulty Affective Forecasts." Cognition
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