Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Democracy Project
About Democracy Project
The Democracy Project promotes the study at Brown of democratic values, norms, cultures, institutions, and practices around the world, with a specific focus on North American, European, and Latin American experiences with democracy, often in comparative contexts. Democracy here names both electoral and procedural systems of representative government as well as direct, participatory action, citizenship and rule of law governance in all its varieties. Democracy is assumed to include a political and moral orientation toward equality and fairness for citizens/residents that depends on robust opportunities for voice, affirmation, mobilization, and dissent.
These are all part of a broad commitment to stable and renewable social orders conducive to human and non-human flourishing. Because nothing worth studying at the university level has only two sides, the Democracy Project will pay particular attention to how differences get cast as binaries and what can be done to alter such frameworks, asking: how do political and social theory, cultural and media studies (print, photography, cinema, digital and sonic media) shape people’s “imagined” political communities and their modes of belonging? How can we intervene into settled debates without getting captured by their terms? Is it possible to orient democratic media to the public good, rather than to so-called "both sides" neutrality?
The Democracy Project’s public facing work includes events showcasing timely scholarly and cultural work on issues of importance to democracy. For 2022-23, our first year, we hosted two major public events. The first, “Begin Again: Democracy in Crisis” featured a keynote lecture by public intellectual Eddie S. Glaude Jr., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. The second event in Sept of 2023, “What is a Democracy Project?” featured 3-5 leaders of other similar efforts at other universities alongside Brown faculty. We asked attendees to share their impressions and to make suggestions about what they would like to see prioritized at Brown by the Democracy Project in the next 2-3 years.
Since then, the Democracy Project has grown into an active and community engaging forum. In 2023-2024, the Democracy Project's theme was “Citizenship and the University,” centering on contemporary civic commitments and challenges. For the 2024-2025 academic year, our theme was “Democracy and Truth," paying special attention to the vital role of freedom of speech and the press amid threats posed by disinformation to the practice of democratic citizenship. The Project’s theme for the 2025-2026 academic year was “Courage and Complicity.” Faced with rising authoritarianism and attacks on democratic values, we are forced to consider how we can navigate layers of crises and enact alternative futures.
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Project Directors
Democracy Project Directors
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Juliet Hooker
Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Social Sciences, Professor of Political Science -
Bonnie Honig
Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science -
Melvin Rogers
Associate Director, Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor of Political Science
Events
Democracy Project Event Videos
To view full videos of past Democracy Projects events use the link below!
Research and Programming Streams
Democracy Project In Action
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Happening, A Post-Dobbs Conversation about abortion access through the lens of Annie Ernaux's 2022 Nobel Prize winning book in Literature and the movie adaptation
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Brown Professor and Co-Director of the Democracy Project introducing the speakers
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Guest Speaker Lori Marso and Brown Postdoc Veronica Fitzpatrick in conversation
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Audience members in discussion
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Audience members in discussion
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Brown Professor and Co-Director of the Democracy Project introducing the speakers
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Lori Marso and Veronica Fitzpatrick
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Democracy Project
Academic Freedom: What Remains?
On October 3rd, 2025, the Democracy Project hosted a panel of four esteemed scholars - Jacob Levy (McGill University), Issac Kamola (Trinity College), Amanda Anderson (Brown University), and Matt Guterl (Brown University) - on the the contemporary crisis of academic freedom.
Event Gallery
Gallery images from the Eddie Glaude Lecture "Race & Democracy: America is Always Changing But America Never Changes."
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