Democracy on Trial

Working Conference: September 1996

The Institute’s first conference, “Democracy on Trial,” grappled with the question: Is democracy, an Enlightenment-era institution, sustainable in an increasingly post-Enlightenment public culture? Conference participants included Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Sandel, Richard Sennett, John Gray, Lawrence Friedman, Neil Postman, William Galston, John Patrick Diggins, and Richard Merelman. The conference received extended national coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Over the course of two days, discussion ranged from examining the weakening of the ethical foundations of democratic institutions to considering transformations in the character and environment of public discourse to debating the role of fear in politics. Participants also considered the moral justifications for democracy, looking at, among other things, the moral culture of jurisprudence and the relationship between technology and the state.

Several of the papers from this conference are published in the Spring 2000 issue of The Hedgehog Review.