The State of American Democracy

Brendan Nyhan comes to the Witherspoon Student Center on Tuesday, October 13, for a talk titled The State of American Democracy. It's part of the annual American Ideals Lecture series hosted by the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State, which sits within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Nyhan is a professor of government at Dartmouth College and a co-director of Bright Line Watch, a project that tracks democratic norms and institutions. That's exactly where the talk pulls from: he'll be drawing on Bright Line Watch's ongoing surveys of political scientists and the public to examine how those norms and institutions have fared under the second Trump administration. It's a look at the health of American democracy through the eyes of the people who study it for a living and the public living through it.

If you've been following the conversation around democratic backsliding or the way norms shape how a government actually functions, this is right in that wheelhouse. Rather than just talking in generalities, Nyhan is bringing the data from those surveys to the table, so the discussion is grounded in what political scientists and the public are actually reporting.

The talk runs from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM at the Witherspoon Student Center, 117 2810 Cates Ave. in Raleigh, and admission is free.