November 2024 General Election: How Are Secretaries of State Preparing Nationwide?

50 states are each in charge of their elections. Join the O’Connor Institute and National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) to learn how our nation’s elections officers are preparing for the November 5th election. How are the elected officials in charge of American elections preparing for November?

Talking Revolution, with Nathan Perl-Rosenthal

“The Age of Revolutions is a tremendous achievement that will shape scholarly and public debate for decades to come.“– Wall Street Journal There is broad scholarly agreement that our current political world owes much to what Thomas Paine was the first to call the “age of revolutions”—that is, the several late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century decades during…

The Future of Urban America

Empty office buildings. Workforce changes allow for more remote work. American downtowns are struggling. The pandemic-led changes in where and how we work and live have weakened and withered many urban cores. The office vacancy rate in Houston is some 26 percent; in Phoenix it is above 20 percent. This shift means fewer workers, fewer…

What’s the Deal with the Electoral College?

Perhaps no extant product of the U.S. Constitution has received more bipartisan animus than the Electoral College. Since 1800 there have been more than 700 proposals introduced in Congress to amend or eliminate the way in which America chooses its presidents. Yet the Electoral College lives on. Why do we have this system? Why does…

How Democracy Survives, with Author Josiah Ober, Ph.D.

The story often told is that rural America is in decline, and that rural Americans are resentful of their suburban and urban counterparts. But Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues in her new book The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means For Our Country that rural Americans

Water and the West

Some 40 million people in the American West rely on water from the Colorado River. But the river’s flow has diminished, and those decreases will likely continue. What does this mean for the American West in general and Arizona in particular? Will booming metro areas—Maricopa County, for example—have to halt their growth? Will vast expanses…

Why Rural America Is Thriving, with Author Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

The story often told is that rural America is in decline, and that rural Americans are resentful of their suburban and urban counterparts. But Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues in her new book The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means For Our Country that rural Americans

The Economy: Inflation, the Fed, and You

Inflation in America is happening for the first time in forty years. Why have prices gone up and when might they come down? What role do monetary policy, the Federal Reserve, and legislators play? And what is the fiscal theory of inflation? The O’Connor Institute Issues & Answers series is pleased to present a three-part webcast series on these important questions with The Economy: Inflation, the Fed, and You.

Emancipation’s Complicated History, with Kris Manjapra

Emancipation in America is often presented as a single and singular undertaking. But Professor Kris Manjapra’s new book, Black Ghost of Empire, complicates that story by situating America’s national emancipation in a long line of global emancipations–including the first emancipations, which occurred in America’s North in the late 18th century–that were in many ways structured to benefit…

The Museum as Civic Space, with Dr. Anthea Hartig

What is the museum’s role in society? How does – and can – the museum function as a civic space? Dr. Anthea Hartig, the first woman director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, recently sat down with Civics for Life to briefly discuss these and other questions. Transcript About the Speaker Anthea…