From the executive branch’s playbook borrowed from dictators and authoritarian regimes to the deliberate suffocation of democratic institutions, authoritarianism is on the rise, and our status quo political systems won’t save us. So what will?

Join these fierce voices to dissect how the US slide toward authoritarianism mirrors global trends—and how we might turn the tide. We’ll hear how movements around the world have built resistance strategies and how organizers and scholars are poised to turn persecution into power.

Let’s learn the tactics, confront the stakes, and fight back together—the time is now!

Speakers:

Dr. Carmen Rojas is the president and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation. Under her leadership, the foundation launched the prestigious Freedom Scholar award, and since starting in 2020 granted more than $252 million in funding to dozens of organizations doing the hard work of shifting power to those people who have long been excluded from having it. Prior to MCF, Dr. Rojas was the cofounder and CEO of the Workers Lab, an innovation lab that partners with workers to develop new ideas that help them succeed and flourish.

Ramzi Kassem is a professor of law at the City University of New York, where he founded and codirects CLEAR. His writing, teaching, and clinical legal practice grapple with the expressions and excesses of the sprawling US security state. From 2022 to 2024, Professor Kassem served as a senior policy advisor at the White House. He has argued constitutional, criminal, and national security cases before the Supreme Court, in the federal courts of appeals and district courts, at the Military Commission at Guantánamo Bay, and in immigration courts. Professor Kassem is an elected member of the American Law Institute and an MCF Freedom Scholar.

Scot Nakagawa is a political strategist and organizer with more than four decades of experience exploring questions of structural racism, white supremacy, and social justice. He is the cofounder and director of the 22nd Century Initiative, a national strategy and action hub building power at the intersection of opposition to authoritarianism and expanding democratic governance in the US.

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and a member of the Justice Collaboratory of Yale Law School. He writes and speaks about authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and other topics. Jason is the author of several books, including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, How Propaganda Works, Knowledge and Practical Interests, and his most recent, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.

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This event is part of the 2025 Marguerite Casey Foundation Summer School, in partnership with Haymarket Books.