Join Mark Blyth, William R. Rhodes ‘57 Professor and Director of the Rhodes Centre for International Economics and Finance at Brown University, for a Jefferson Memorial Lecture on Can a Liberal Polity Survive the Politics of Grievance?

Contemporary populism is almost everywhere; a right-wing phenomenon that focuses on a politics of white working-class grievance. A set of grievances that are to be addressed, when in power, with policies of expulsion, exclusion, and domination. Attempts by liberal states to deal with such movements paradoxically rely on a similar politics of exclusion, such as building so-called firewalls against the right, which are themselves deeply anti-democratic. Given that these grievances are based on real social and economic problems that have blighted working-class communities across the world, can a liberal polity address such grievances more positively? Or must it, to protect itself, similarly exclude and dominate such parties, movements, and such grievances?

This in-person event will be held at Alumni House, Toll Room, on the UC Berkeley Campus and will follow evolving public health guidelines.

For updates about this lecture and upcoming lecture series events, please visit the Berkeley Graduate Lectures website.

UC Berkeley Jefferson Memorial Lecture with Mark Blyth