News

The Buntrock Institute for Freedom and Community at St. Olaf College will host a wide range of events on campus this spring focused on what it takes to preserve, protect, and strengthen democracy.

The events in the Strengthening Democracy series are free and open to the public, and most will also be streamed and available for on-demand viewing online.

“American democracy is at a pivotal moment. Trust and confidence are at an all-time low, and thinkers from across the ideological spectrum are expressing concerns about the ability of institutions to meet the moment. This speaker series brings together a range of experts to reflect on the future of American democracy,” says St. Olaf Professor of Political Science Chris Chapp, the Morrison Family Director of the Institute for Freedom and Community. “We hope the thinkers we are bringing to campus will challenge us to think critically, equipping our students with the tools to engage in these important conversations.”

The spring series will begin with a February 26 lecture by Duke University Professor of Political Science Michael Munger, who also serves as the director of the university’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program. His talk, titled Populism and Democracy: A Public Choice View, will begin at 3:45 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons. It will be streamed and archived online.

Munger began his career as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission, and taught economics at Dartmouth College and political science at both the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before joining Duke. His research interests include the study of the morality of exchange and the working of the new “Middleman Economy.” Much of his recent work has been in philosophy, examining the concept of truly voluntary exchange, a concept for which he coined the term “euvoluntary.” His newest book, The Sharing Economy, addresses the platform economy.

“We hope the thinkers we are bringing to campus will challenge us to think critically, equipping our students with the tools to engage in these important conversations.”

— Morrison Family Director of the Institute for Freedom and Community Chris Chapp

The spring speaker series will continue with an April 7 speech by University of Texas at Austin  Professor of Government and Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts Kurt Weyland. His talk, titled Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat, will begin at 3:30 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons. It will be streamed and archived online.

Weyland’s research and writings have examined transitions to democracy, market-oriented adjustment, cross-national waves of policy reform and political regime change, the spread of authoritarianism and fascism, and the politics of populism. While he devoted many years to the study of Latin America, he has extended his research interests to Europe as well, moving from the revolutionary wave of 1848 to the contemporary period. His work has drawn considerable inspiration from cognitive-psychological insights and has increasingly combined political science with historical analysis. His talk will offer a very different take on the robustness of democratic institutions than the lecture the Buntrock Institute hosted in December by Harvard University Professor of Government Steven Levitsky, whose talk was titled The Great Abdication: How American Democracy Died. You can listen to that take here prior to attending Weyland’s lecture.

On April 22 the speaker series will continue with a lecture by Lilliana Mason, a professor of political science at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her talk, titled Polarization, Partisanship, and Political Violence, will begin at 3:30 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons. It will be streamed and archived online.

Mason’s research on partisan identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American social polarization has been widely published in academic journals and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio. She is the co-author of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chapp invited Mason to speak about escalating political violence in Minnesota shortly after State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated and State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were critically wounded in attacks last summer. 

On May 1 and 2 the Buntrock Institute will hold a journalism conference on campus centered on Polarization and the Changing Media Landscape.  It will open with a May 1 keynote address by Jamie Druckman, the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. His talk, titled American Politics in the 21st-Century: Distrust, New Media, Polarization, and Dissatisfaction, will begin at 5 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons. 

Druckman has published more than 200 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, science, and psychology journals. His recent books include Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divides, Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX’s Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports, and Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments.

The closing lecture will be provided by Isaac Saul, the founder of Tangle, a news source that aims to disrupt partisan patterns of media consumption.

Saul is a politics reporter who grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, one of the most politically divided counties in America. He has lived and worked in cities across the U.S. and around the world. He helped build A Plus, a solutions journalism media outlet, alongside actor and entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher. His work has appeared in many digital publications and has been cited by Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. In 2016 Yahoo News named Saul one of the 16 people whose writing shaped the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In 2020 Forbes Magazine called him one of the 1,000 “upstart entrepreneurs redefining the American dream.”

In addition to these lectures, the Strengthening Democracy series will also include an exciting array of immersive learning experiences this spring.

On March 4, Nicholas Longo, the inaugural director of the Rutgers Democracy Lab and professor in the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, will lead a one-hour workshop for St. Olaf students focused on Naming and Framing Issues for Better Dialogue. Longo will share tips and strategies for successfully naming and framing issues that are important for better dialogue, advocacy, and organizing efforts.

Then the spring events will conclude with a May 8 Civic Engagement Showcase from 3–5 p.m. in Tomson Hall. Hosted by the Buntrock Institute’s Svoboda Center for Civic Engagement, the showcase will feature presentations by students on their academic and cocurricular civic and community-based projects, with the goal of educating others and sparking ideas for future work.

Established at St. Olaf in 2014, the Buntrock Institute for Freedom and Community encourages free inquiry and meaningful debate of important political and social issues among students, faculty, and the general public. The Buntrock Institute sponsors a range of programming opportunities, in addition to the lecture series, to further cultivate civil discourse within the context of the liberal arts. The Svoboda Center, established in 2025, aims to foster the college’s civic leadership and responsible engagement with the local community through many opportunities such as civically engaged courses, internships, volunteering, and research opportunities.