Please Note: This program has a rescheduled date (originally March 27, 2020).

For over two centuries our country has accepted the efficacy of democracy without question. United we stood in rejecting and ultimately defeating in turn the proponents of monarchism, fascism, and communism. Today, however, emerging threats to democratic practices in this country and around the world—including populist movements, disregard of rule of law, and attacks on freedom of expression--call for a serious examination of what is right and wrong with democracy today.

Charles Ingrao, professor emeritus of history at Purdue University, examines the challenges and institutional flaws that handicapped, for example, the post-Soviet successor states and doomed the hopes of the Arab Spring. He compares democracy with competing forms of government, examines the attributes of healthy democracies, and considers how to strengthen modern democratic institutions in danger of retreat.