Venue

: The Great Hall
: 1119 Eighth Avenue (enter on Eighth Avenue)
Seattle, 98101 United States + Google Map

Organizer

: University of Washington Office of Public Lectures
Phone: (206) 543-5900
Email: lectures@uw.edu
: View Organizer Website

Note: A livestream of this event will also be available.

Presented by the University of Washington Office of Public Lectures. For questions about this event, please contact lectures@uw.edu.

Rentals

In recent years, American democracy has bent but not broken. What are the threats facing American democracy, and what are its sources of resilience? In this talk, Dr. Jake Grumbach will investigate trends in three areas of American democracy: the rule of law, majority rule, and political equality. Each of these areas is a crucial component for a political system of the people, by the people, and for the people, and each area shows signs of strain. While much of the concern about democracy has been focused on the White House, the U.S. constitutional system gives much of the authority over democracy to the Supreme Court and state governments—and it is in these institutions that he will uncover new and underemphasized evidence on the health of American democracy.

Jacob M. Grumbach is an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He was previously associate professor of political science at the University of Washington and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton. Grumbach studies the political economy of the United States, with a focus on democracy, American federalism, labor unions, and statistical methods.

Dr. Grumbach’s book, Laboratories Against Democracy, shows how state governments over the past generation moved from the periphery to the center of American politics and policymaking, with profound consequences for democracy. The book won the Merze Tate & Elinor Ostrom Outstanding Book Award from the American Political Science Association and was selected as one of The New Yorker’s Best Books. Grumbach is also co-director of the Washington State Election Database housed at the UW Center for the Study of Demography and Ecology. Outside of academia, Grumbach is a nerd for classic funk, soul, and hip hop.

Graduate School Public Lectures are brought to the community through three very generous private endowments:

Walker-Ames Fund

Jessie and John Danz Fund

Mary Ann and John D. Mangels Fund

Learn more about the University of Washington Office of Public Lectures Series here.