America at a crossroads
At stake in the next election is nothing less than a redefinition of America’s priorities, according to Harvard scholars taking part in a panel discussion at the Barker Center. Offering both historic and contemporary perspectives on the current election, several faculty members reflected on how themes from America’s recent and distant past are playing out on today’s national stage during an Oct. 16 panel discussion. The national mood is strikingly similar to that of a century ago, when the majority of Americans were disillusioned with the “vast inequalities of wealth and power” in the United States, said Alexander Keyssar, Harvard Kennedy School’s Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy. That unhappiness led to creation of what Keyssar deemed a “grand bargain” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries through institutional reforms involving corporate regulation, unionization, social insurance provisions, and universal suffrage. But in recent decades, that bargain has come under...