Democracy, Policy, and Civic Life

Nicholas Buccola is a writer, lecturer, and teacher who specializes in the area of American political thought. He is the author of One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal (Princeton University Press, October 2025). His previous books include The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America (Princeton University, 2019) and The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (New York University Press, 2012). He is the editor of The Essential Douglass: Writings and Speeches (Hackett, 2016) and Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy (University Press of Kansas, 2016). His essays have appeared in scholarly journals including The Review of Politics and American Political Thought as well as popular outlets such as The New York Times, Salon, The Baltimore Sun, and Dissent. He is Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. He serves as the Book Review Editor of American Political Thought (University of Chicago Press). He is at work on a new book about the contested meaning of freedom in the American civil rights and conservative movements.

Brando Simeo Starkey is a leading writer and scholar in US History and politics, with a specialties in consitutional amedments and the US Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a member of the New York Bar, he taught law at Villanova Law School and wrote for several years for ESPN’s The Undefeated (now Andscape). Born and raised in Cincinnati, he lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons. He has launched a newsletter, The Braveverse, about law, politics, and freedom from caste, at the TheBraveverse.com and a YouTube channel covering the same themes at https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveverse.

Dr. Douglas Boin (B.A., Georgetown University; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is a historian, teacher, and author. His books include Coming Out Christian in the Roman World, A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity, and Alaric the Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome, which was named by The Economist one of the best books of 2020. His next book, Clodia of Rome, will appear from W. W. Norton in August 2025. Doug shares the lessons he’s learned about the people of the ancient past with audiences at home: stories of inclusion and exclusion, examples of how lawmakers have manipulated judicial and constitutional systems to stigmatize individuals and groups, times when men in power have limited people’s access to their due rights and privileges. Today, when he is not directing an excavation in Umbria, Italy, or teaching undergraduates and graduate students in St. Louis, Doug remains committed to his roots as a writer–ensuring that Rome and all its stories remain accessible, compelling, and above all, unexpectedly relevant to all.

As an acclaimed thought leader, cultural historian, media scholar and lecturer, Siva Vaidhyanathan speaks on the impact of digitalization on society and democracy. In his speeches, he encourages audiences to consider how technological advances like artificial intelligence, corporations like Google and algorithm-fueled social media platforms shape the way we think and what we can do to foster a new Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world. At the University of Virginia, Vaidhyanathan serves as the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and the director of the Center for Media and Citizenship. He is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues on public radio shows and news programs, notably BBC, CNN and NBC. Siva has authored several books, including Antisocial Media and The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). He also co-hosted the podcast Democracy in Danger. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and The Nation.

Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor of Gender Studies, African American Studies, and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice (CRDJ) and Co-Director of the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She currently serves as a Director of the UCLA DataX Initiative, leading work in critical data studies for the campus. Professor Noble is the author of the best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic harm in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been widely-reviewed in scholarly and popular publications. In 2021, she was recognized as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for her ground-breaking work on algorithmic discrimination. Dr. Noble is a board member of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, serving those vulnerable to online harassment, and provides expertise to a number of civil and human rights organizations. She is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she is a chartering member of the International Panel on the Information Environment. In 2022, she was recognized as the inaugural NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award recipient.

Dr. Davarian L. Baldwin is an internationally recognized scholar, historian, and public advocate. He is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Founding Director of the Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College. A foremost expert on Black social movements and African American history, he is often called upon to consult on everything from the politics of reparations to the global impact of the Harlem Renaissance. His academic and political commitments have focused on global cities and particularly the diverse and marginalized communities that struggle to maintain sustainable lives in urban locales. Baldwin is the award-winning author of several books including In The Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (2021), Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (2007), and Land of Darkness: Chicago and the Making of Race in Modern America (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).

Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, award-winning filmmaker and writer Raquel Cepeda is the author of Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina (Atria, Simon & Schuster). Bird of Paradise is equal parts memoir about Cepeda’s coming of age in New York City and Santo Domingo, and detective story chronicling her year-long journey to discover the truth about her ancestry. Raquel travels widely to speak to diverse audiences about Latina identity, social justice, gentrification and inequality.