A star-studded lineup of distinguished speakers will appear at Kenyon College this fall as part of a lecture series examining the state of American democracy.
The mix of media giants, scholars and politicos from across the ideological spectrum will include George Packer — staff writer at The Atlantic and National Book Award-winning author — and William Kristol, noted neoconservative thinker and editor-at-large of The Bulwark. Larry Diamond, founding editor of The Journal of Democracy, and former senator and ambassador Jeff Flake will take part as well.
All of the events from Kenyon’s Center for the Study of American Democracy (CSAD) are free and open to the public. Each will take place in Oden Hall’s Archon Auditorium on the College’s campus in Gambier.
“We at CSAD are very excited to be able to host such a terrific group of writers, scholars and policy advocates, all of whom have weighed in with significant efforts to protect and promote our democracy,” said Joseph L. Klesner, CSAD director and a professor of political science and international studies.
The series kicks off Sept. 17 with a lecture by Packer, who has reported extensively on national politics and U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of the award-winning book “The Unwinding,” which explored the forces that would lead to the election of President Donald Trump and the rise of the Make American Great Again movement. Packer’s 7:30 p.m. talk, which will take place on Constitution Day and is titled “What is a Patriot in America Today?” will focus on competing understandings of patriotism and national identity in the U.S. today.
Kristol is the influential founder of The Weekly Standard magazine who now works for the center-right website The Bulwark, founded by Sarah Longwell ’02. He will speak on “The Fate of American Democracy” on Oct. 20 at 7:30 p.m.
A week later, on Oct. 27, Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and senior fellow in global democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, will discuss “The Wave of Democratic Backsliding and How to Reverse It.” That event featuring Diamond, who has written or edited dozens of books on democracy, will start at 7:30 p.m.
Finishing out the series, Flake — a former Republican representative and senator from Arizona known for working across the political aisle — will speak on Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m. Flake, who served as the ambassador to Turkey from 2022 to 2024, will focus on the topic, “Bridging the Divide: Can Bipartisanship Make a Comeback?”
Parking for all of these events is available on site behind Chalmers Library in the West Quad Parking Garage.
Established in 2007, Kenyon’s Center for the Study of American Democracy organizes conferences, lectures and seminars with the goal of stimulating nonpartisan civic and political discourse. It also provides teaching and research opportunities for faculty and students and promotes student internships in Washington, D.C.
For more information, contact the Center for the Study of American Democracy at americandemocracy@kenyon.edu or 740-427-5855.
Click to download images of George Packer, William Kristol, Larry Diamond, Jeff Flake and Kenyon College.