Larry Kramer

How did America get itself into this political fix? And what steps can be taken to tame the divisions and rancor that are roiling its politics? The roundtable that discussed these questions featured Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times, Professor Aziz Huq of the University of Chicago, Professor Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University.

The roundtable was chaired by Professor Larry Kramer, the president and vice chancellor of LSE.

Good evening.

Wanna welcome everyone to, uh, LSE and to the conference, Taming Polarization: Reforming the American Federal Republic.

Um, that we're meeting only a few weeks before, uh, the US midterm elections is not a coincidence.

We deliberately timed the conference to coincide with the midterms, um, in part to just underscore the importance, um, and relevance of the issues that we will be discussing tonight and tomorrow, and in hopes that by leveraging LSE's great convening power, that we could shine a bright spotlight on what's at stake.

Before I turn things over to, uh, Larry Kramer to introduce tonight's panels and speakers, I wanna draw your attention to two things, two additional, I think, cool things, features of the conference.

The first is that in the back, so the south side of the room here, you'll see there's a display of, uh, posters, uh, featuring, uh, the research, uh, by some very impressive, uh, LSE PhD students, uh, from really across the school, from, uh, multiple departments working on conference related themes and in the spirit and the tradition of the US Center doing it in comparative context.

How did America get itself into this political fix, and what steps can be taken to tame the divisions and rancor that are roiling its politics? The roundtable that discussed these questions featured Jamel Bowie of the New York Times, Professor Aziz Haq of the University of Chicago, Professor Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University.

The roundtable was chaired by Professor Larry Kramer, the President and Vice Chancellor of LSE.

Good evening.

I want to welcome everyone to LSE and to the conference, Taming Polarization, Reforming the American Federal Republic.

We deliberately timed the conference to coincide with the midterms, in part to just underscore the importance and relevance of the issues that We will be discussing tonight and tomorrow and in hopes that by leveraging LSE's great convening power that we could shine a bright light.

spotlight on what's at stake.

Before I turn things over to Larry Kramer to introduce tonight's panels and speakers, I want to draw your attention to two things, two additional, I think, cool things, features of the conference.

The first is that in the back, so the south side of the room here, you'll see there's a display of of posters featuring the research by some very impressive LSE PhD students.

Julie, one of the reasons I like shadow court's framing is that it is essentially not just empowering the public to think really differently about the court, but fundamentally empowering Congress, you know, a supine Congress that can't move.

And it goes back to a conversation we had with Larry Kramer at the beginning of the summer, which is, we're not talking about dismantling the court.

We're talking about enabling Congress to step into this conversation.

And in the interest of kind of concluding, we're just a little bit out from an election in which I truly believe the American public might be at some kind of tipping point where they really want to hear about what could be different in a world where the court wasn't constantly proclaiming from on high, like, we didn't mean it when we said one person, one vote.