PROGRAM

Professor Charles Taylor,  2016 Democracy Fellow examines the fragility of democracy on the eve of the 2016 election. Introduced and moderated by the eminent political theorist Nancy Rosenblum, Charles Taylor’s talk, the ensuing dialogue with the audience, and the reception afterward sought to invigorate a thoughtful public conversation about current stressors on democratic theory and practice.

Charles Taylor, Emeritus Professor of philosophy at McGill University, is the recipient of the prestigious John W. Kluge, Templeton, and Kyoto prizes, among other honors. Taylor’s philosophical approaches to the issues of modernity, democracy, equality, and inclusion in key texts such as A Secular Age (2007), Sources of the Self (1989), and Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition (1994) have transformed conceptual categories in the humanities and social sciences. Throughout his career, Taylor has exemplified the crucial civic role played by university research, entwining his theoretical approaches with political participation in several domains: from the 1960s, when Taylor ran in three federal elections in Mount Royal to his key role in constitutional negotiations in Canada.

Nancy Rosenblum is Harvard University Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government emerita. Her field of research is historical and contemporary political thought. Her most recent book is Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America, published by Princeton University Press in 2016. She is editor of Thoreau: Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Prof. Rosenblum is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. She is past President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, past Vice-President of the American Political Science Association, past Board Member of the Russell Sage Foundation, and past Chair of Harvard’s Department of Government, from 2004 to 2011. She is currently Co-Editor of the Annual Review of Political Science, serves on the Anxieties of Democracy program’s Advisory Committee, and co-Chairs its Working Group on Climate Change.