POSTED BY MARTIN KICH
Several days ago, Sasha Ingber contributed an article to the Washington Post on how “Trump’s Presidency Has Prompted a New, Nationwide College Course on Why Democracies Collapse.”
The course has been developed by Robert Balir, an assistant professor of political science at Brown University. A specialist in post-conflict security in Africa, “reached out to professors at other universities to see if they wanted to work together, received a $4,000 grant from Brown and employed some research assistants.” Those collaborations resulted in a course being taught at universities across the nation, though it is listed under various course titles: although it is called “Democratic Erosion” at Brown, at other universities it is called “Democratic Decay” and “Democratic Backsliding.” It is also being taught on both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Ingber notes: “Ten American schools, including American University, the University of Denver, Ohio State and Yale, are offering the class this spring — seven more than in the fall. And six schools, including Georgia State University and Indiana University, are teaching parts of the curriculum. The course is also being taught at the University of the Philippines Diliman, in a country where thousands of people have been killed in the authoritarian war on drugs waged by its president, Rodrigo Duterte.”
Ingber also offers this description of the course: “Democratic Erosion provides a sort of postmortem of democracy in nations where it died—and sometimes was revived. Students learn about the fate of democracies in Venezuela, Poland, Hungary and Russia, and read scholarly work such as Cas Mudde’s book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe and Kurt Weyland’s journal article ‘Latin America’s Authoritarian Drift: The Threat From the Populist Left.’ Each class has a theme, such as ‘Populism and Demagoguery,’ ‘Scapegoating, Paranoia and Exclusion,’ and ‘Resistance.’ Students attend a political event, and write and respond to posts in a cross-university blog. By the end of the course, each student produces a country case study. Master’s candidates at Texas A&M will synthesize the case studies from all the universities and send a final report to the U.S. Agency for International Development in the spring, in hopes of showing ‘exactly how democratic erosion manifests in different countries and over time,’ says assistant professor Jessica Gottlieb.”
The article includes the following two terrific illustrations by Lydia Ortiz:
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It’s popular now in the academy to get all worked up over Trump and associate him with various structural theories of political change, or especially, degradation. To that, I may only say to the academy: where have you been for the past 16 years? The GWOT construct is perhaps among the greatest mis-directions perpetrated in the public domain, and with it hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties; millions of displaced refugees; thousands of dead, maimed, wounded and psychologically destroyed military men and women; and nearly $7 Trillion spent from the US Treasury. And a domestic analogue called the “Patriot Act” with billions spent of surveillance, security infrastructure, military hardware, and thousands of pages of additional legislation few have bothered to read. And the academy? Not a peep of protest. In fact, at most institutions, the terror-security construct is openly embraced, and indeed has made many academic careers. Yet now, all of a sudden, the Left, the academy and thousands of misguided students somehow feel that Trump is the hard turn. It is not only factually erroneous, but reveals an unfortunate suspension of the scientific method–skepticism and investigation–in exchange for ideological solidarity. It is a most dangerous development, and perhaps the more manifest product of democratic devolution. McGill’s Charles Taylor is speaking today at my alma, the University of Chicago, on “Democratic Degeneration,” which is largely centered in such cognitive confusion. https://news.uchicago.edu/webcast/live-webcast-neubauer-collegium-directors-lecture-charles-taylor-democratic-degeneration
Thank you, Martin!