Lumen Christi Institute

This event is co-presented with the Nova Forum and co-sponsored by America Media, the Collegium Institute, the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, and the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies.

We are experiencing a crisis of democracy more powerful than anything seen in a generation: inequality continues at a galloping pace; policing is increasingly racialized and militarized; political decision-making appears remote and divorced from the lives of ordinary people.

This panel discussion—including renowned philosopher Charles Taylor--will consider sources and solutions to the present crisis of democracy by drawing on two recent books: Reconstructing Democracy by Charles Taylor, Patrizia Nanz, and Madeleine Beaubien Taylor and We Built Reality by Jason Blakely. 

Both works identify within our political and cultural crisis the loss of democratic participation and the rise of top-down technocratic, managerial rule.