This episode explores the complex and contradictory relationship between liberalism and illiberalism in a historical framework. It speaks to several key questions about the emergence of illiberal practices today: What is the nature of the illiberal challenge to an understanding of liberalism as individual freedom? Is there a natural affinity between liberalism and democracy? How do populist illiberal trends exploit the weaknesses of liberal constitutional regimes? And from where do threats to liberal principles in universities emerge?
Guests featured in this episode:
Renata Uitz, is the co-editor of Handbook of Illiberalism, who has contributed two chapters to it as well. Renata is also professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the Central European University, Vienna, as well as the co-director of its Democracy Institute in Budapest.
Helena Rosenblatt is a professor of history, French, and political theory at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, and the author of both Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion andThe Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century. Helena has also submitted an article on “The History of Illiberalism” in the Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism (2022).
