Democracy.
Headlines tell us that it is under attack, under threat, and in decline. Why is that happening? What can we do about it? Scientia's 2024-25 lecture series examines the political, social, and ethical challenges facing representative government and societies where everyone is supposed to have a voice.
Fall 2024 Lecture Schedule
October 24, 2024, 4pm | Fondren Library, Kyle Morrow Room
Speakers
Philip Kortum, Professor of Psychological Sciences
Title: "The role of usable systems in making your vote count"
Abstract:
When people talk about election integrity, the conversation tends to be centered around the security of the voting system hardware and software. However, in recent history, there have not been any documented cases where failures in the software or hardware security have led to altered election outcomes. On the other hand, there are numerous examples where the usability of the voting system has had a direct impact on the likely outcomes of an election. This lecture will describe some of the perceptual and cognitive issues that are associated with casting a vote, and talk about the usability of voting processes, ballots, and voting machines.
Bob Stein, Lena Gohlman Professor of Political Science
Title: "Free and Fair Elections: Voter Confidence and Election Laws"
Abstract:
Modern democracies pride themselves on enacting and implementing laws and procedures to assure fair and efficient elections and ballot secrecy. At a moment in time in which many are questioning the parameters, rules, and institutions of the American republic, what will it take to build trust in the conduct and outcome of elections amongst the American election? This lecture will explore the origins of declining trust and confidence in American elections and recent efforts to restore confidence in American elections. Original data will be presented on efforts to craft public information messaging and campaigns.
November 19, 2024, 4pm | Fondren Library, Kyle Morrow Room
Speakers
Peter C. Caldwell, Samuel G. McCann Professor of History; Founding and Current Director, Program in Politics, Law & Social Thought
Title: "Democracy and Dictatorship: Of Fuzzy Distinctions, Political Passions, Militant Democracy, and Power"
Abstract:
We often distinguish between democracies and dictatorships. That distinction raises issues for today's world, in which parties use democratic forms to implement dictatorships.
- First, while propagandistic claims by absolute dictatorships to be democracies may be swept aside, at the same time democracies can certainly be more or less authoritarian, whether by denying rights or by outright fraud: at what point does a democracy become a dictatorship?
- Second, should anti-democratic parties be restrained by force? Restraining the people contradicts the principle of democracy that it is the people who should make a decision.
- Third and related: to restrain an anti-democratic party that represents a massive part of the people requires extreme coercion: is militant democracy even possible when a real threat emerges?
All of which leads us to pose that classic question of Germany's first democracy: is a democracy by its very nature defenseless against itself?
Christian J. Emden, Frances Moody Newman Professor; Professor of German Intellectual History and Political Thought; Founding Director, Program in Politics, Law & Social Thought
Title: "Democracy is Not Community"
Abstract:
Over the past forty years or so, demands for more “community” have become a prominent feature in much political theory and public debate on both sides of the political divide. Liberal democracy, or so the argument goes, has become detached from the concrete interests of citizens and thus given rise to a bureaucratic state. Community might be what we desire from political life, and it is tempting to hope that a return to community can correct this disillusionment with liberal constitutional democracy. Instead, I argue that community is not at all compatible with the normative demands of democracy. The language of “community” contributes to democratic backsliding by legitimizing a critique of liberal constitutional democracy in favor of another political regime – sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly. The idea that democracy is concerned with community, or even that democracy is community, misunderstands the critical function and value of liberal constitutional democracy.
Spring 2025 Lecture Schedule
January 30, 2025, 4pm | Fondren Library, Kyle Morrow Room
Panel Information
Title: "American Democracy through Foreign Eyes"
Abstract:
The United States has always been a source of fascination — both attraction and repulsion — for the rest of the world. Four humanities scholars, who created a massive open online course (MOOC) available on Coursera, "America Through Foreign Eyes," that has enrolled nearly 19,000 students, will eludicate contemporary sentiment about the state of democracy in America from their areas of specialty: China, Russia, France, and Mexico.
Speakers
Anne Chao, Adjunct Lecturer in Humanities; Manager of the Houston Asian American Archive
Lida Oukaderova, Associate Professor of Art History
Julie Fette, Associate Professor of French Studies
Moramay López-Alonso, Associate Professor of History; Co-Director, Program in Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities; Adjunct Associate Professor of Economics | Lecturer in Management
February 25, 2025, 4pm | Fondren Library, Kyle Morrow Room
Speakers
Laura Correa Ochoa, Assistant Professor, Department of History
Title: "Economic Democracy and US Empire in Latin America"
Abstract:
How do we define democracy and who gets to define it? In the 20th century popular sectors across Latin America—peasants, workers, the poor—often mobilized in support of economic democracy. This was a vision of democracy that incorporated demands for economic redistribution and grassroots political participation. Yet, the United States often framed these demands as anti-democratic to justify its intervention across the region. Drawing on cases of US intervention in Latin America, this talk examines US anxieties of substantive democracy and how its own definitions of democracy could be marshalled to elide radical projects of social and political change.
Nana Osei-Opare, Assistant Professor, Department of History
Title: Authoritarianism as Democratic
Abstract:
“Authoritarianism” and “democracy” are often understood as two opposite political systems and philosophies. Democracy is supposed to embody the will of the people while authoritarianism the will of a single individual. Yet, in exploring historical cases from the African continent over the last 60 years, I will explore the concept of ‘democracy’ as a political system that thwarts the people’s collective will while seeing ways that authoritarianism can embody the people’s will.
BOCHNER LECTURE | March 13, 2025, 4pm | Fondren Library, Kyle Morrow Room
Speaker
Ifeoma Ajunwa, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law; Director, A.i. and the Future of Work Program; Emory University School of Law
Title: "The Quantified Worker"
Abstract:
A.I. technologies are increasingly deployed to hire and to surveil workers. Workplace wellness programs appraise our health. Personality job tests calibrate our mental state. Employer monitoring of social media evaluate our social behavior. With rich historical sources and contemporary examples. The Quantified Worker explores how the workforce science of today goes far beyond increasing efficiency and threatens to erase individual personhood. With exhaustive detail, Dr. Ajunwa describes how different forms of worker quantification are enabled, facilitated, and driven by technological advances. Timely and eye-opening, The Quantified Worker advocates for changes in the law that will mitigate the ill effects of A.I. technologies in the modern workplace.
April 8, 2025, 4pm | Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium
Speakers
Rodrigo Ferreira, Assistant Teaching Professor in Computer Science; Courtesy Faculty in Philosophy; Faculty Scholar, Baker Institute
Title: "Does AI Have Politics?"
Abstract: Innovation in AI has long been seen in popular imagination as an essential – if not an inevitable – part of technological and social development. As such, recent advances in AI have been lauded by some as an obvious step forward toward greater economic productivity, social well-being, and human progress. To what extent, however, are these visions underlined by specific historical and cultural assumptions about the meaning of key political concepts such as fairness, freedom, and democracy? Following the work of Langdon Winner and his seminal text, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”, as well as that of critical theorists and scholars on the history of cyber-libertarianism, this talk will examine the often-hidden political dimension to AI development, discuss the increasing significance of AI in contemporary society and politics, and explore the multiple ways in that AI developers and policymakers are today shaping the future of democracy.
Douglas Natelson, Harry Carothers Wiess Professor of Physics
Title: "The Direct Democracy of Matter"
Abstract: We learn about states of matter in primary school, but not how they come about. How does a collection of water molecules "decide" whether to be a cloud of vapor, a puddle of liquid, or a block of ice? It turns out that matter practices a kind of direct democracy, with its state being determined by the raw power of the popular vote. When faced with different possible macroscopic states (e.g., a gas, a liquid, a solid), the one that we see tends to be the one that corresponds to the most microscopic arrangements of the atoms. I will give a few examples of how this works, as well as discussing what happens when this democratic process is hindered or otherwise complicated.
: 
: 
: 
: