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Event Details

Nancy MacLean: Democracy in Chains

11 March 2019
6.30pm – 7.30pm AEDT
Leighton Hall, Niland Scientia Building
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Democracy conceptual graphic

How did corporations come to possess rights? How did democracy come to be defined as selfish individualism? Or money as free speech? Most people would blame Trump, but the man himself is just a distraction from the deeper and more troubling right wing agenda.

Award-winning historian Nancy MacLean takes us undercover to look at how the radical right’s influence in the US has grown to undermine democracy.

From its intellectual foundations in the work of economist James Buchanan to the long-term efforts of libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers, she examines the stealth strategies that that have been deployed to undermine trust in government and influence policy debate. 

This event is presented in partnership with the Adelaide Writers' Week. 

Speakers
Nancy MacLean Portrait

Nancy MacLean

Nancy MacLean is a Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and the award-winning author of many books including Behind the Mask of Chivalry  (a New York Times 'noteworthy' book of the year) and Freedom is Not Enough, which was called by the Chicago Tribune "contemporary history at its best". Her most recent book, Democracy in Chains, was a 2017 National Book Award Finalist and has been described as "the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government”. Nancy lives in Durham, North Carolina.

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