Craig Calhoun on the Current Crisis of American and Global Democracy and Potential Remedies

Democracy in Question?

Guests featured on this episode:

Craig Calhoun, University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has written on the struggle by students for democracy in China, a book titled "Neither Gods nor Emperors." He has co-authored the volume, "Does Capitalism Have a Future?" with Immanuel Wallerstein and others. His latest book, "Degenerations of Democracy," written with Charles Taylor and Dilip Gaonkar, notes the signs that U.S. American democracy exhibits symptoms of decline or even of degeneration, and inspires our conversation in this episode.

Glossary

Who is Peter Thiel?
(14:55 or p.4 in the transcript)

Peter Thiel is a German American entrepreneur and business executive who helped found PayPal, an e-commerce company, and Palantir Technologies, a software firm involved in data analysis. He also invested in several notable ventures, including Facebook. Critics questioned involvement of Palantir Technologies with the CIA and other government agencies, especially given Thiel’s libertarianism. However, he argued that Palantir’s technology allowed for focused data retrieval, preventing overreaching searches and more draconian measures. The company was also used by banks to detect fraud and handle other cybersecurity efforts. In 2005 Thiel established Founders Fund, a venture capital firm. It invested in such companies as Airbnb, Lyft, and SpaceX. Thiel garnered attention in 2016 when he became a vocal supporter of Republican presidential nominee—and eventual winner of the election—Donald Trump, donating money and even speaking at the party’s convention: source

What is Silicon Valley?
(15:07 or p.4 in the transcript)

Silicon Valley is an industrial region around the southern shores of San Francisco Bay, California, U.S., with its intellectual center at Palo Alto, home of Stanford University. Its name is derived from the dense concentration of electronics and computer companies that sprang up there since the mid-20th century, silicon being the base material of the semiconductors employed in computer circuits. The economic emphasis in Silicon Valley has now partly switched from computer manufacturing to research, development, and marketing of computer products and software: source

What is the ‘Roe v. Wade’ case?
(25:36 or p.6 in the transcript)

Roe v. Wade is a legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled (7–2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (“…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”). Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022: source

What is the ACT UP movement?
(30:50 or p.7 in the transcript)

ACT UP, in full AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, is an international organization founded in the United States in 1987 to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic. It was the first group officially created to do so. ACT UP has dozens of chapters in the United States and around the world whose purpose is to find a cure for AIDS, while at the same time providing accurate information, help, and awareness about the disease by means of education and radical, nonviolent protest. The organization was founded in March 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in Manhattan, New York, in response to what was seen as the U.S. government’s lack of action on the growing number of deaths from HIV infection and AIDS: source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

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