At a moment of heightened political tensions in the United States, Distinguished Fellow of Practice Greg Berman discusses trends in political violence, extremism, and polarization with criminologist Gary LaFree.

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway famously observed that a character went broke in two ways: gradually, then suddenly. The same dynamic has been at work in American politics. For decades, the composition of our principal political parties has been slowly shifting, without a great deal of public attention. And then the 2024 presidential […]

As we lose interpersonal trust, and pernicious polarization and stereotyping take hold, that may lead people to be more willing to tolerate political violence.

In the latest installment of The Polarization Project, HFG Distinguished Fellow of Practice Greg Berman interviews Clionadh Raleigh, a professor of political violence and geography at the University of Sussex, about violence across the globe, from Ukraine to Myanmar, and about the effects of political polarization in the United States.

“I think that a lot of people are getting radicalized in their opinions without becoming radicalized in their actions.” — Clionadh Raleigh  

Robert Talisse, a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, believes that polarization is a problem that cannot be solved, only managed. He also believes that the greatest threat to American democracy comes from within. In Talisse’s diagnosis, American democracy suffers from a kind of autoimmune disorder. He makes the case that democracy can break down […]

Is the United States on the brink of a civil war? Few people are better placed to answer that question than historian Richard Slotkin. Slotkin, an emeritus professor at Wesleyan University, has devoted his career to the study of violence and American history. In an award-winning trilogy of books (Regeneration Through Violence, The Fatal Environment, […]

National elections in the United States tend to spark talk of “red” and “blue” America—two parallel nations divided by geography and politics, with rural and central states trending Republican and coastal and urban areas voting for Democrats. This shorthand obscures as much as it reveals, of course. There are many blue voters in red states, […]

In the latest installment of The Polarization Project, HFG Distinguished Fellow of Practice Greg Berman interviews Daniel Stid, former head of Hewlett Foundation’s US Democracy program and founder of Lyceum Labs, about the health of American civic culture.

“The more that we can try to solve this problem away from the thunderdome of national politics, the more I think we can make headway. I think the solutions to polarization are likely to be found in Ingham County, Michigan, or Paducah, Kentucky, or Fresno, California.  ” –  Daniel Stid 

Ilana Redstone has launched a personal campaign against certainty. A professor of sociology at the University of Illinois, and a former co-director of The Mill Institute, Redstone believes that certainty is the accelerant that has helped to fuel the culture wars and political polarization in the United States. “The power of certainty is easy to […]

Is polarization in the United States laying the groundwork for political violence? It is not a simple question to answer. Affective polarization—the tendency of partisans to hate those who hold opposing political views—does seem to be growing in the United States. But as a recent report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace makes clear, […]