From October 28-30, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies hosted a symposium titled “How Democracy Survives: The Crises of the Nation State.” The three-day virtual symposium featured leading scholars and activists from around the world, exploring how democratic values and institutions can evolve and adapt to the growing challenges that are now destabilizing democratic nation states, such as climate change, resurgent nationalism, ethnic and religious conflict, human rights abuses, and deepening levels of economic inequality.
Video recordings of every session are available below.
Plenary Address: The New Era of Glocalism Sheila Foster, The Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy, Georgetown University; Advisory Committee, Global Parliament of Mayors
Commentary / Q&A by Graham K. Wilson, Professor of Political Science & Director, Initiative on Cities, Boston University
Plenary Address: People Power & Its Limits James E. Miller,Professor of Liberal Studies and Politics, and Faculty Director of Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism, The New School for Social Research
Commentary / Q&A: Camila Vergara,Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Columbia Law School
Panel Discussion: The Evolution of Democratic Federalism Tiziana Stella, Streit Council for a Union of Democracies; Philomila Tsoukala, Georgetown University Law School; Michael Holm, Boston University
Moderator: Naomi Mezey,Georgetown University Law School
Plenary Address: Democracy and the Global Commons Spencer Weart, American Institute of Physics
Moderator: Vivien Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University
SCHEDULE
Wednesday, October 28
9:00 – 10:00 am: INTRODUCTION & FIRST PLENARY ADDRESS
The New Era of Glocalism Sheila Foster, The Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy, Georgetown University; Advisory Committee, Global Parliament of Mayors
Commentary / Q&A: Graham K. Wilson, Professor of Political Science & Director, Initiative on Cities, Boston University
India and Internationalism in the Twentieth Century Manu Bhagavan, Hunter College
The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy in Europe and North America Vivien Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University
Moderator: Martin Chungong, Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
Constructive Nationalism Versus Anti-Democratic Globalism Robert Kuttner, Brandeis University
Climate Change as a Unifying Force Michael D. Bess, Vanderbilt University
Moderator: Joyce Najm Mendez, Board Member, Center for UN Constitutional Research
Thursday, October 29
9:00 – 10:00 am: SECOND PLENARY ADDRESS
People Power & Its Limits James E. Miller,Professor of Liberal Studies and Politics, and Faculty Director of Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism, The New School for Social Research
Commentary / Q&A: Camila Vergara,Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Columbia Law School
10:00 – 10:30 am: BREAK
10:30 am – 12:00 pm: THE EVOLUTION OF DEMOCRATIC FEDERALISM
The Federalist Wager on Organizing the World through Democracy Tiziana Stella, Streit Council for a Union of Democracies
Is Social Europe Possible Beyond the Nation State? Philomila Tsoukala, Georgetown University Law School
The Other American Dream: Human Rights and the One World Order Michael Holm, Boston University
Moderator: Naomi Mezey,Georgetown University Law School
The Great Experiment: How to Build Thriving Multiethnic Democracies Yascha Mounk, Senior Fellow, SNF Agora Institute & Associate Professor of the Practice, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
10:30 am – 12:00 pm: COSMOPOLITAN DEMOCRACY & UN REFORM
What Was Political About the Historic World Federalist Movement? Joseph Preston Baratta, Worcester State University
A UN Parliamentary Assembly as a Starting Point for a World Parliament Andreas Bummel, Democracy Without Borders
United Nations Charter Review: Reconstructing Article 109 Par 3 Towards Global Constitutionalization S. M. Sharei, Center for UN Constitutional Research
Moderator: Vivien Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University
Convenors
Richard Samuel Deese
Boston University
Bio
Richard Samuel Deese is a Senior Lecturer for the Division of Social Sciences at Boston University. He is the author of We Are Amphibians: Julian and Aldous Huxley on the Future of Our Species (2015), Surf Music (2017), and Climate Change and the Future of Democracy (2019). His research interests include the history of science, global environmentalism, and transnational democratic movements since the end of World War Two.
Michael Holm
Boston University
Bio
Michael Holm joined the Boston University’s College of General Studies’ Social Science Department as a Lecturer in 2016. Before that he spent three years as a Lecturer at the CAS History Department. He specializes in international relations history, the history of U.S. foreign relations, and U.S. political and cultural history.
Holm’s first book The Marshall Plan: A New Deal for Europe was published by Routledge in 2016. He has published peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of the Historical Society and Diplomacy and Statecraft. Holm has two forthcoming chapters, “The United States in the World: Victory Culture and the Debate over U.N. Peacekeeping” in L’histoire du maintien de la paix: nouvelles perspectives/History of Peacekeeping: New Perspectives (forthcoming, 2018) and “‘The patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate:’ Marshall’s Quest to Save Europe” in Center of the Storm: George Marshall’s Influence after World War II (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).
He is currently working on an article/book project on American intellectuals and the development of U.S. foreign aid policy in the early Cold War era.
The New Era of Glocalism
People Power & Its Limits
The Great Experiment: How to Build Thriving Multiethnic Democracies
Democracy and the Global Commons
