2023-2024 Stanford Distinguished Professors
Thursday, September 21 @ 7:00 pm
Kislak Center at the University of Miami
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "Strongmen and How to Push Back Against Them"
to register.
The Center for the Humanities is inviting you to join us for the first Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professors Lecture of the year with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She is an MSNBC Opinion Columnist and commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and other media outlets about authoritarianism, Fascism, and threats to democracy around the world.
Authoritarianism is spreading across the globe, and Ben-Ghiat argues that the United States has become the latest front of the struggle between autocracy and democracy. This talk covers the key elements of the authoritarian playbook—corruption, violence, propaganda, machismo, and leader cults—and how they are deployed today by autocratic forces in Italy, Hungary, the US, and elsewhere.
Ben-Ghiat also looks at the most effective strategies to push back against authoritarians. We are living through a global renaissance of mass nonviolent protest which is giving energy to the fight to save democracy. We in the US can learn from the struggles of those facing autocrats abroad, she argues. We can not just save our democracy but rethink it to make it stronger and more appealing to future generations as well.
Organized in partnership with the George P. Hanley Democracy Center.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She is an MSNBC Opinion Columnist and commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and other media outlets about authoritarianism, Fascism, and threats to democracy around the world.
Her latest book, Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present (W.W. Norton & Company) examines how illiberal leaders use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power, and how resistance to them has unfolded over a century.
Monday, January 29, 2024 @ 7:00 pm
Kislak Center at University of Miami
Steve N. Levitsky, Professor of Government and Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University
Thursday, February 29, 2024 @ 7:00 pm
Kislak Center at the University of Miami
Andrew Delbanco, Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies, Columbia University and President of the Teagle Foundation
