Crisis Democracy: Conversations on Politics in America will encourage the university community to reflect on, interpret, and imagine the future of political participation, inclusion and expression. Conversations between academics and local organizers will explore topics including: legal developments that affect citizen democratic participation, debates over free speech and safe spaces, and the shifting configurations of social movements.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. will deliver the keynote lecture of the Crisis Democracy symposium. His most well-known books, Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, and In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, take a wide look at black communities and reveal complexities, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for hope. In addition to his readings of early American philosophers and contemporary political scientists, Glaude turns to African American literature in his writing and teaching for insight into African American political life, religious thought, gender and class.

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. is currently the chair of the Department of African American Studies and the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University. Widely regarded as one of the most important black intellectuals in the United States today, Glaude offers a critical and insightful view on the problems currently facing black America as well as the nation at large. He is the author of Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America (Chicago, 2000), winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Book Prize, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America (Chicago, 2007), and African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2014). He is the editor of Is it Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism (Chicago, 2002) and co-editor with Cornel West of African American Religious Thought: An Anthology (Westminster John Knox, 2003). His award-winning book, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, has been characterized as a tour de force. Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (Crown Publishing, 2016) is his latest book, a provocative account of the current state of race in the United States.

This LSA Bicentennial Theme Semester event is presented with support from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the University of Michigan Bicentennial Office. Additional support provided by Afroamerican and African Studies; American Culture; College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Graduate Student Events and Conferences Fund; History; Institute for the Humanities; Joseph A. Labadie Collection; Rackham Graduate School Dean's Initiative; Philosophy; and Sociology.