Democracy and Vulnerability with Jonathan Homola & Marla Stone

Join the Wende Museum, the Thomas Mann House, and dublab radio for the tenth program in the series on the current state of democracies. How should a democracy deal with its own vulnerabilities? How do democracies need to evolve to deal successfully with increasing global levels of ecological crisis, geopolitical tensions, economic disparities, and culture wars? How much vulnerability can a democracy endure?

The Student Council consists of a team of highly engaged, talented, and diverse undergraduate and graduate students who invite prominent guest speakers to discuss topics relating to society, politics, culture, and art. In conversation with academics, journalists, politicians, and artists, the students will explore the various threats to democratic institutions and principles worldwide, as well as strategies to potentially overcome these threats.

The guest speakers for our special in-person October program are Jonathan Homola and Marla Stone; they will be discussing the global rise of far-right populism.

Jonathan Homola is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Most of his research deals with questions of representation and electoral preferences in Western democracies. Among his main fields of interest are xenophobia and support for right-wing extremism.

Marla Stone is professor of history at Occidental College and specializes in the history of fascism and in questions of dictatorship and genocide in the modern era. Stone’s work emphasizes the relationship among culture, politics, and the state in the 20th century. She has published on a variety of topics in European history, including Italian Fascist cultural politics, anti-communism, the contemporary far right in Europe, Italian Holocaust memory culture, and the continuities and ruptures between historic fascism and its contemporary manifestations. She has taught at Occidental College since 1994 and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.