Join Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway and the Eagleton Institute of Politics for a moderated conversation exploring the past and future of our democracy—particularly the actions we can take in our troubled present to secure our democracy’s future.

2022 Clifford P. Case Co-Professors:

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, and host of the podcast, The Last Archive. Her many books include, These Truths: A History of the United States (2018), an international bestseller, named one of Time magazine’s top ten non-fiction books of the decade. A textbook edition will be published in August 2022. Her 2020 New Yorker pieces contemplated the pandemic year, including assays on loneliness, race riot commissions, policing, the census, the decline of democracy, living indoors, the literature of plagues, and burnout.

Eric Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Citizen University, which works to build a culture of powerful and responsible citizenship in the United States. He also directs the Aspen Institute’s Citizenship & American Identity Program. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including The Accidental Asian Notes of a Native Speaker; The Gardens of Democracy (co-authored with Nick Hanauer); You’re More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen; and his most recent, Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy — a New York Times New & Notable Book. Liu has been selected as an Ashoka Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is featured on the PBS documentary American Creed and is a frequent contributor to The Atlantic. Liu served as a White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and as the President’s deputy domestic policy adviser. He was later appointed by President Obama to serve on the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the intertwined histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. She is the author of the award-winning books, How Race Is Made in America:  Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts and Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940. Her most recent book is A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community, on immigrant workers as placemakers—including her grandmother—who nurtured and fed the community through the restaurants they established, which served as urban anchors. She co-edited Relational Formations of Race: Theory, Method and Practice, and is now at work on a new book,The Silent Hands that Shaped the Huntington: A History of Its Mexican Workers. In addition to publishing widely in scholarly journals, she has also written for the LA Times, Washington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, and more. Professor Molina is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.

This program is presented by the Clifford P. Case Professorship of Public Affairs, which honors Senator Case by bringing prominent and respected public servants to meet with students and deliver public remarks at Rutgers.