Episode 8.5: Elite Power and the Meaning of Democracy

Interviewer: MIRANDA EDITH SKLAROFF. Historian and theorist SUSAN STRYKER joins the Andrea Mitchell Center to discuss her new book, Changing Gender: The History and Future of a Concept, and the histories and politics that shape how gender is understood. The conversation explores the contemporary politics of trans rights, the relationship between trans liberation and feminism, and Stryker's account of gender as a system of social and linguistic classification. Drawing on histories of anthropology, cybernetics, psychedelic science, and her own experience, Stryker considers how gender has been constructed and how it might be imagined differently.

Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE. In this episode, host Joshua Rose speaks with DR. NATASHA PIANO, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at UCLA, about her book Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science. Together, they revisit early twentieth-century political theorists who challenged conventional understandings of democracy, elections, and elite power. Their conversation explores how concerns about plutocracy, political accountability, and democratic legitimacy shaped twentieth-century political thought, and why these debates remain deeply relevant as contemporary democracies grapple with growing inequality, institutional distrust, and democratic backsliding.

Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE. In this episode, host Joshua Rose speaks with DR. NAREMAN AMIN about her new book, Is God for Revolution? Affect, Youth, and Islam in Post-2011 Egypt. Drawing on interviews with young Egyptians who lived through the 2011 revolution and its aftermath, Dr. Amin explores how political upheaval transformed not only civic participation but also religious identity, authority, and spirituality. The conversation examines the complex relationship between Islam and political activism, the emotional legacy of revolution, and how a generation continues to grapple with hope, disappointment, and the search for meaning in the years since Egypt's democratic opening closed.

Interviewer: MATTHEW ROTH. The acts of the current administration, as well as the OBBBA legislation passed by Congress, point to an economic vision that rejects sharing resources to relieve economic inequality, arguing that money diverted from rewarding success in the private sector is generally money wasted. Journalist ALISSA QUART, in her work as Executive Director of the non-profit Economic Hardship Reporting Project (founded with Barbara Ehrenreich) and as the author of several books, has worked to counter this vision, but also to understand its deep roots in American cultural history. In her discussion with histodrian Matthew Roth, she describes the way economic precarity has climbed the class ladder, as documented in her book Squeezed (2018). In her follow-up, Bootstrapped (2022), she argued that punishing economic policies are undergirded by the narrative of the American Dream, which attributes financial success or struggles entirely to individual merit or decisions. And with the ascendance of a self-described self-made billionaire to the White House, she argues that without the growth of counter-ideals of interdependence and mutual support, economic inequality is only going to get worse.

Interviewer: RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN. Political theorist MICHAEL GORUP joins the podcast to discuss the intertwined histories of race, democracy, and popular sovereignty in the United States. Drawing on themes from Gorup's book The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People, the conversation ranges from Jefferson and Reconstruction to Black Power and the contemporary crises of neoliberalism, examining how democratic ideals and racial domination have evolved together across American history.

Interviewer: MATTHEW ROTH. At a moment when tough-on-crime rhetoric, as voiced by Donald Trump and others in the Republican Party, has again become a politically polarizing issue, it is perhaps an opportune time to take stock of the U.S.'s uniquely punitive treatment of certain sorts of crime. Penn political scientist MARIE GOTTSCHALK has long pointed out that, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the carceral state has expanded and become entrenched amid moral panics – variously about urban disorder, drugs, or sex offenses – that have had a bipartisan sweep. In her new book, Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power, and Violence in America, Gottschalk points to a contrary case: corporate crime, or "crime in the suites," which has been treated with ever greater lenience since the 1990s, even as a corporate crime wave brought down the global economy in 2008. In her discussion with historian Matthew Roth, she explores how these are flipsides of the same coin, indicative of how the American political system has redirected rage from those who causes the greatest harms to more vulnerable targets whose crimes pale in comparison.

Interviewer: MATTHEW ROTH. The ways in which the Civil Rights Movement translated passion and protest into durable political change were complex, involving a wide range of actors beyond those most prominently enshrined in the popular imagination. In his new book, political scientist MARION ORR argues for the critical importance of a figure now widely forgotten: Michigan Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr., who during his tenure from 1955-1980 was a persistent and effective voice for desegregation and Black self-determination. In his discussion with historian Matthew Roth, Orr describes Diggs' roots in his Detroit family's funeral home, the House of Diggs; his political career as a pathbreaking Black Michigan Senator and then U.S. Congressman; his accomplishments, ranging from the desegregation of airline travel and Washington D.C. home rule to the founding of both the Congressional Black Caucus and institutions critical to the anti-Apartheid movement; and finally, to his downfall with a criminal conviction for the financial mismanagement of his congressional office. Orr's book is House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr.

Interviewer: RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN. In this episode, DEREK DENMAN explores the concept of "fortress power," a form of governance rooted in the design and control of space. Tracing its origins from early modern fortresses to contemporary borders, cities, and infrastructure, Denman reveals how architecture and planning shape surveillance, movement, and political authority. The conversation examines how promises of security often intensify control and inequality, highlighting the enduring and evolving relationship between space, power, and resistance.

Interviewer: MATTHEW ROTH. Speech was central to the political success of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, who each emerged through insurgent campaigns bolstered by the energy generated at mass rallies. CODY KEENAN, Director of Speechwriting for the Obama White House, argues that this is where the similarity ends, however. While Obama chose his words carefully in order to navigate the divisions in society and craft a hopeful story of America that foregrounded its ability to change in the face of fear and entrenched prejudice, Trump gives rein to America's reactionary id in a voluminous but largely unstructured stream of speech. In his discussion with historian Matthew Roth, Keenan reflects on the period of the Obama administration at the focus of his bestselling book, Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America, as well as on the art and importance of speechwriting, the state of Democratic politics, and the Obama post-presidency. Keenan is currently a visiting professor at Northwestern University and a partner at the speechwriting firm Fenway Partners.

Interviewer: MATTHEW ROTH. If today's politicians, even and the state and local level, often seem more interested in scoring off ideological opponents to gain clicks than in working across party lines to solve problems, LEO SOLGA aspires to follow a different path. Solga is a recent Penn graduate in Political Science and a candidate in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania House District 148. In his discussion with historian Matthew Roth, he describes his journey into politics and his positions on such issues as transit, education, reproductive rights, housing, and criminal justice. Above all, he argues that politics can and should be rooted in the concrete concerns of constituents and a deep and personal connection to local districts – and that Pennsylvania state government, which has not yet become consolidated under one party, is a place where cross-party collaboration is a necessity. The Pennsylvania primaries take place on May 19, 2026.