Since January 2025, journalists, activists, politicians, and others have raised the alarm about the state of American democracy and the rule of law. Donald Trump's administration, and a willing Republican Party, is reshaping the country and changing its relationship with the rest of the world. Conspiracy theories bolster health policies and inspire legal actions. The administration has weaponized the justice system against its foes, dismantled numerous agencies and programs, and used the military to police and intimidate civilians.
What are the roots of the modern GOP and the MAGA movement? How did the United States get to where it is today? Are there precedents from postwar American history? Does the party of Donald Trump represent continuity with or a departure from the American conservative tradition? This roundtable will consider these and other questions in order to make sense of the present in light of the past.
Participants:
- Darren Dochuk is Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History and the William W. and Anna Jean Cushwa Co-director, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of "Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America" (Basic Books, 2019) and "From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism" (W.W. Norton, 2011).
- George Lewis is Professor of American History at the University of Leicester. He is the author of "Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement" (Hodder, 2006), "The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anticommunism, and Massive Resistance, 1945-1965" (University Press of Florida, 2004), and the forthcoming "Un-Americanism: A History of the Battle to Control an Idea" (University Press of Florida, 2026).
- Oscar Winberg is a postdoctoral fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies and the John Morton Center for North American Studies at the University of Turku. He is the author of "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (University of North Carolina Press, 2025).
- Hilde Løvdal Stephens is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Oslo. She is the author of "Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home" (University of Alabama Press, 2019).
- Randall J. Stephens is Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo. He is the author of "The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South" (Harvard University Press, 2008); "The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age", co-authored with physicist Karl Giberson (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); and "The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll" (Harvard University Press, 2018).
The event is open to all. Welcome!