Live with Joyce Vance and Princeton Professor Kim Scheppele

If you missed my live conversation with Princeton Professor Kim Scheppele, you’re in luck. You can click on the link above to listen to it (or access the transcript), and you can share it with friends. And you’re going to want to. By the end of our conversation, there was a multitude of comments thanking her for sharing her expertise with loss of democracy in Hungary and Poland, and for drawing specific lessons and offering specific advice about what we can do here to push back against Trump’s efforts to seize power.

Kim’s expertise is genuine. She was cited yesterday by the European Court of Justice in the biggest human rights case in its history—and this by a court that rarely cites any scholarship in its opinions. But she’s the rare academic who isn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and get elbow deep in the practicalities of what it takes to save a democracy.

This is the third in our series of essential live chats in The Autocracy and Democracy series, as we mark the third anniversary of Civil Discourse this week. Our final Substack Live will be Sunday at 5 p.m. ET with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen and an expert on fascism, especially in the context of Italian history.

If Civil Discourse is helping you better understand the times we’re living in and the path to preserving democracy in the face of Trumpism, I hope you’ll consider supporting the newsletter. Your subscriptions—and upgrading to a paid one if you can—help me devote the time and resources it takes to put out the newsletter and make it available to everyone.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Get full access to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance at joycevance.substack.com/subscribe