Steven Hahn, author of Illiberal America: A History, and Manisha Sinha, author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860–1920, join Thomas Donnelly to explore the history of illiberalism in America and to assess illiberal threats facing our democracy today.
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Today’s episode was produced by Lana Ulrich, Tanaya Tauber, Samson Mostashari, and Bill Pollock. It was engineered by Greg Scheckler and Bill Pollock. Research was provided by Samson Mostashari, Cooper Smith, and Yara Daraiseh.
Participants
Steven Hahn is a professor of history at NYU and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who studies American political and social movements. His acclaimed works include A Nation Under Our Feet and A Nation Without Borders. His most recent book is Illiberal America: A History (2024).
Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the 2024 president-elect of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. She is a leading authority on the history of slavery and abolition and the Civil War and Reconstruction and has written numerous books on these topics. Her most recent book is The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860–1920 (2024).
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:
- Steven Hahn, Illiberal America: A History (2024)
- Manisha Sinha, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 (2024)
- Abraham Lincoln, "Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield" (1838), Founders’ Library
- 13th Amendment, Interactive Constitution
- Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Founders’ Library
- Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (1985)
- Marcia Coyle, “The U.S. Supreme Court Cases Built on a ‘Rotten Foundation’,” Constitution Daily (May 2022)
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