Joanne B. Freeman, Professor of History, specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and early national periods of American History. Her most recent book, The Field of Blood: Congressional Violence in Antebellum America, explores physical violence in the U.S. Congress between 1830 and the Civil War, and what it suggests about the institution of Congress, the nature of American sectionalism, the challenges of a young nation’s developing democracy, and the longstanding roots of the Civil War.

Daniel Ziblatt is a historian, expert on democracy, and the author of four books, including How Democracies Die (2018), co-authored with Steven Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller and described by The Economist magazine as “the most important book of the Trump era.” In 2023, he published Tyranny of the Minority, also with Steve Levitsky. The book is an analysis of American democracy in comparative perspective, also a New York Times bestseller.

Steven Levitsky is a professor at Harvard and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.

Join United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law for a livestream event with world-renowned presidential historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times #1 best-selling author Doris Kearns Goodwin. In this moderated discussion, Goodwin will provide insights from her five decades of scholarship and how our shared history can help guide us in navigating the current political climate.

Join us for the United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law event, co-sponsored by DemocracyFIRST, with historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman.