Thursday, September 30
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Webinar Waiting Room Opens at 7:15 pm with music and video introduction, Program Begins at 7:30 pm
Registration Required Below
The Mark Twain Library and the Redding League of Women Voters are proud to present the third installment of our series “Conversations: Truth, Myth & Democracy” with Dr. Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Dr. William Galston of the Brookings Institution, moderated by Western Connecticut State University’s Dr. Daniel Barrett. This virtual discussion is between two noted social and political thinkers who will examine the causes and consequences of a divided America and explore how a revival of some of the principles of our political tradition can contribute to solving our national challenges.
The Conversations series is a grassroots effort that continues to examine the underlying meaning of our democracy and how democracy matters even when we have different ideas about what it should look like. The focus is on addressing the difficult issues of truth telling and myth busting by bringing much-needed community conversations to help promote education, informed dialogue and civil discourse. The series is brought to you in association with Easton Public Library, Newtown’s C.H. Booth Library, Ridgefield Library, Weston Public Library, The League of Women Voters of Ridgefield and the League of Women Voters of Northern Fairfield County.
Registration is required for this free virtual program. Registered participants will receive a Zoom invitation on the day of the program. If you include your cell phone number on the registration form, you will receive one text reminder, with Zoom link before the program begins. Webinar waiting room opens at 7:15 pm and the program begins at 7:30 pm
There will be time for questions during the webinar but you are also welcome to submit your questions to our speakers in advance. Click here to submit.
About our presenters:
Dr. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founding and current editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor of The New Atlantis and a contributing editor to National Review. Dr. Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels.
In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Dr. Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream (Basic Books).
He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Dr. William Galston holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a Senior Fellow. Prior to January 2006, he was the Saul Stern Professor and Acting Dean at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, founding director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and executive director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal, co-chaired by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and former Senator Sam Nunn. A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy.
Galston is the author of nine books and more than 100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics. His most recent book is Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Yale 2018). A winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert H. Humphrey Award, Galston was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. Galston has appeared on all the principal television networks and is frequently interviewed on NPR. He writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Daniel W. Barrett is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychology at Western Connecticut State University. He graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University, earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Arizona State University and served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Health Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barrett is author of the 2016 textbook, Social Psychology: Core Concepts and Emerging Trends. His research interests include suspicion, persuasion, social influence, and cross-cultural psychology. He lives here in Redding, CT.
Registration is currently closed for this event.