In Conjunction with the Stanley P. Stone Distinguished Lecture Series, the BU College of General Studies,
the Workable World Trust, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning
Video recordings of every session will be available in the coming weeks
From October 28-30, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies was pleased to host the symposium, “How Democracy Survives: The Crises of the Nation State.” In this three-day online symposium, leading scholars and activists from around the world explored how democratic values and institutions can evolve and adapt to the growing challenges that are now destabilizing democratic nation states, such as climate change, resurgent nationalism, ethnic and religious conflict, human rights abuses, and deepening levels of economic inequality.
Among the questions that were considered:
- How can local leaders from around the world overcome nationalism to address such global problems as climate change and pandemics more effectively?
- How can ethnically and religiously diverse nation states maintain democracy in an age of resurgent racism and religious strife?
- How can democratic governments respond to those aspects of economic globalization that increase economic inequality?
- How can we address the “democratic deficit” in the United Nations and other international organizations founded in the 20th century?
- What are the prospects for the growth of new democratic institutions that transcend the boundaries of the nation state in the 21st century?
