The Democracy in Troubled Times speaker series held another event in the Old Chapel on Monday Oct. 28, 2024, featuring novelist Danielle Allen discussing a confident pluralist perspective to face political policies.
“This is, I know, a very anxiety inducing time for all of us, politically, as we watch the election unfold, as we watch world events and all of the challenges and difficulty and pain,” Allen said.
Allen is a Professor at Harvard University as well as Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School. She is a former columnist for the Washington Post and has written several books including “Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus,” and “Justice by Means of Democracy.”
She began the lecture sharing her experience growing up in a politically active family. Her “granddad, on my dad’s side, helped found one of the first NAACP chapters in northern Florida in the 40s,” and in 1992 Allen’s aunt and father ran for office.
Allen’s aunt was in the “Freedom Party running for Congress, which is the far left side of the political spectrum,” while her father “was running for US Senate from Southern California as a Reagan Republican.”
The dinner table discussions were lively, as Allen describes “the two of them would just go at it, they had so many differences of perspective and opinion. We had incredible Thanksgiving dinner family conversations.”
“As I watched them, I was really trying to figure out how to make sense of it,” said Allen, “Two things became clear to me, for all that they disagreed … they actually shared a sense of purpose.”
“Now we are a long way away from 1992, our world feels very, very different now,” Allen said.
According to the Pew Research Center, in 2022, 62 percent of Republicans reported having a ‘Very Unfavorable’ view of the Democratic party compared to 21 percent in 1994. Democrats reported similar increases with 54 percent having a ‘Very Unfavorable’ view of republicans in 2022 compared to 17 percent in 1994.
“Every democracy, by definition, is always about people arguing with each other,” said Allen continuing to say that democracy gives the ability to “hash it out,” and put everyone’s different experiences together to form the best shared outcome.
Allen and her colleagues recently studied the electoral college and examined both political parties’ ideas for how to improve it.
“Many folks who came from the Democratic side of the political spectrum said we should get rid of the Electoral College,” said Allen, “Republicans said we must keep the Electoral College.”
Both with differing views, Allen offered a separate idea, to remove the limit of electoral votes, allowing for a more equal representation of the public opinion and “lo and behold we got bipartisan agreement for that solution. It’s currently a live conversation in Congress.”
“By being ready to articulate our own values, hear the values of others, commit to negotiation in a context of mutual respect,” Allen said.
Blaise Barbeau, senior political science major at UMass attended the event for class credit, however he enjoys the speaker series and has gone to five talks.
“I came to this one specifically because I was interested in the idea of pluralism,” said Barbeau, “A lot of my classes have been talking about it recently, and the idea that different facets of society need to be accounted for in order to have representational participation.”
“It’s very hard to engage in productive conversation [in this election cycle], so I think having speakers that really have a range of expertise on different topics, especially related to democracy are important,” said Kaitlyn Soper, senior political science major at UMass.
“[The speakers] helps us know how to be civically engaged, participate and engage in conversation in these times.”
“It’s important to keep in mind that it’s not just like you’re either a Democrat or Republican … It’s more like you’re an American, and the choices you make affect every other American in the country. So, let’s try and be as collaborative as possible,” Barbeau said.
“How can we get out of these troubled times?” Allen asked, “the answer I’m going to offer is that confident pluralism is a necessary part of how we get out of these troubled times.”
The Democracy in Troubled Times series will hold their next event on election day, Nov.5 with multiple activities throughout the day.
Alexandra Hill can be reached at [email protected]