Lloyd Cutler Lecture

Is This America? Requiem for a Nation Lost, Vision for an America Refounded

The United States is facing a profound democratic crisis. Whether it will emerge from this crisis with the basic framework of democracy intact remains unknown. In this talk, Sherrilyn Ifill explores how this current impasse results in part from America’s deep, unresolved strain of racism and white supremacist ideology, which she argues has weakened the essential institutions meant to ensure the health of a democracy. Failure to attend to the corrosive hold of white supremacist ideology on American politics, education, and economic decision-making, she says, has left the US vulnerable to authoritarian and anti-democratic forces that threaten to destroy what has been the world’s most powerful, wealthy, and admired democratic nation. Only by properly diagnosing how we arrived at this moment, Ifill argues, can America develop a curriculum to “re-found” the nation and build a strong, durable, and healthy democracy.