Webinar On-Demand — Emergency Summit: America Besieged by Racism, Materialism, and Militarism

The Capitol riot on January 6, shocking as it was, surfaced most dramatically a fraying of the social fabric that has been growing for decades. One month later, the Quincy Institute is convening a virtual roundtable of eminent public intellectuals to reflect on the ways that America’s unrelenting militarism, as well as materialism, and racism – identified by MLK in his speech “Beyond Vietnam” in 1967 as the ‘giant triplets’ – combined and contributed to the events of January 6. Particularly under discussed, how have 20 years of war and domination abroad contributed to the coarsening of our society and politics at home? How do the forces Dr. King identified more than 50 years ago interplay to hollow out our democracy and civil liberties, and what steps might lead to national progress and healing? Our hope is that this “emergency summit” might feed a larger national conversation.  Please join us on February 8 at 1:30-2:30 pm (ET) for a virtual round table with Danielle Allen, Peter Beinart, Reverend Liz Theoharis, Daniel McCarthy, and Neta Crawford — moderated by QI President Andrew Bacevich.

Panelists

Danielle Allen

Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. She is a political philosopher and public policy expert, who focuses on democracy innovation, public health and health equity, justice reform, education, and political economy. She also directs the Safra Center’s Democratic Knowledge Project, a K-16 civic education provider. Her books include Our Declaration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality, Cuz: an American Tragedy, and Talking to Strangers: anxieties of citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. She was for many years a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and writes for the Atlantic.

Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and writes The Beinart Notebook at Substack.com. He is a professor of journalism and political science at The Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, a non-resident fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace and a CNN political commentator. His work centers on the nexus of domestic and foreign policy and politics. From 1999 to 2006 he was the editor of The New Republic. His books include The Good Fight, The Icarus Syndrome and The Crisis of Zionism.

Neta Crawford

Neta C. Crawford is professor and chair of political science at Boston University. She co-directs the Costs of War Project based at Brown and Boston Universities. Neta is a member of the Board of the Council for a Livable World and of the Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018, the International Ethics Section of the International Studies Association presented Neta with their Distinguished Scholar Award. Her books include Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for America’s Post-9/11 Wars.

Daniel McCarthy

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review, and Editor-at-Large of The American Conservative. He is also the director of the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program at the Fund for American Studies and a Visiting Fellow of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at the Catholic University of America. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, The Spectator, The National Interest, Reason, and the recently published volume Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the Twenty-First Century from Encounter Books.

Rev. Liz Theoharis

Rev. Liz Theoharis is co-chair with Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign, one of the nation’s leading social movements. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she directs the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice. She was named one of the Politico’s 50 top “thinkers, doers, and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics” in 2018 and the Center for American Progress’s “Faith Leaders to Watch" in 2020. She is widely published in The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, The Guardian, Sojourners, The Nation, and others. Her books include Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor.

Andrew Bacevich (Moderator)

Andrew J. Bacevich is the President of the Quincy Institute. He graduated from West Point and Princeton and served in the army for 23 years, prior to an academic and writing career. Among his dozen books are: The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism; Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War; America’s War for the Greater Middle East; and The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory. He is professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University.