linda gordon has taught at the university of wisconsin and nyu. originally a historian of russia

and ukraine, she published cossack rebellions and social turml turning then to u.s. history, work focused on the history of gender and family issues. publishing books on the history of birth control. family■& the arizona orphan abduction, won the bancroft prize for best book in american history and the beveridge prize for;

and a nation bor teaches at newk university and lives in new york city and southol long island. in the new york times, david leonard wrote that steve's book, quote, an important case for vigilance in the face of extremism and warns against, telling the history of the united states as one of inevitable progress. note, please join me in welcoming steve and linda linda. and particularly thanks to the cullmanviting me to do this, bur the year so long ago that i got to spend here even more. want to thank dupont because for one thing. thisot mg+e to read your book right away. who knows when i would have got i'm yet and actually had a bi and. i want to s by asking you

other people to think about the because talking using the term illiberal is, not common and. the way historians think about things. we have lot of other other labels, but it's veryilluminatio point that it is not oen very tk introduces to a new way to think about history. so i want to post you a bunch of that are hovering around this term. you did. w did you come to choose that term? how does it differ for conrv ofy seem evident. but to me i think it's not totally evident. if you. okay. so.

those are great questions. let me just begin by thanking the center, salvatore gabbana, who unfortunately not here. laurennberg who was generously introducing us? paul de la dach, who is also a florida director. and the entire staff of the new york public library as we were here in a weird year, it was 20, 20, 2021. limited to the limited access to each other. which was really unfortunate because we were onheir work on zoom and like, you know, fabs . and yet we didn't really have much time to talk with each other. i dgetting to know a few people.

but, you know, between the comments our staff and the the other people in the library, they really put themselves at a lot to help us. so i reall fellows who i did now a little bit and who in a variety of ways helped oin. now to your questions best to st answering them is to talk a little bit about how this book being. in many ways, i've been writinge historian but chiefly from the point of view of those were on the receivin end of illiberamovements. basically what in 20 1516, i was really struck by the reaction of journalists and

other observers to who talked about how he violated wasn't sure what those norms were, but it was interesting that already 2016, just looking at the supreme court, that the supreme had intervened and determined the outcome of a presidential that in citizens had opened the spigot of big money, rights act and state legislatures across the country were basically mimicking what was happening at the end of the 19th and early 20th century and restricting i thought this is pretty obvious. somehow there was this, you interest and i tnkis in talkinge are these liberal there that se strong and enduring and you have a case where you know as in noxious ed growing you know out of the ground is sucking

them up. so i decided, i thought i would, you know, maybe te writing about this. and then the question was,how wa project? because i really wanted to dsomt illiberalism, linda's question, you know, as a relati. so then the question is, well, basically is coming out and the end of th20th and beginning of the 21st century as a way of about this phenomenon historically. and i'm sure you know, won't convince, you know, some readers of of, youwisdom of that but w'l you know i will in a sbout what its aspects are is that i found it a very■p compelling

schiff's concept that could encompass a variety of forms of disposition and movements that may that some to sometimes■ñ■ overlp with conservatism, but not always. they weren't always sometimes ts that we necessarily see that way. but nonetheless, that's how gs out. and it also flexible. so i time. i was really worried about telling a continuity story that this gets embeddedat's the way t plays out again and again and again was its future its features, which have to do with the of a assigned hierarchies

f race or gender or nationality a belief inequality a interest cultural homogeneity, whether of race or nationality or religion mark of internal as well as. external enemies and an eme poly of achieving the of expulsion, y of the borders of communities and societies know, one thing that's really important, the will of the community as kind overriding the rule of law and of course, community is a very vague idea but and community is constantly being redefined. and whether local basis or even on a national

basis. and i think something that is both a andng that manifests itself, you know, rather differently. so that's kind of how you know, and i thought that the book begins■ actually. yeah. know of louis hartz as a book published ins tradition in amera was very influential one and you for kind of a consensus version of american history as basally political and economic liberalism. and i write a book about the illiberal tradition in america pretty quickly. i learned that that was probably not the best approach, including when i a presentation on zoom my to the other fellows and got some know suggestions from themuld try toe

book starts with a tradition in thes and then goes back into century just to push you a little more. okay, what liberals and liberalism is. there were a lot of her labor that we use when we think about people who were on the. right. whether you were talking conservative far fascists, even popust, a phrase that i bet you certainly can't very comfortable with because know that in the 19th century there was a strong pulisth illiy also to me that there are some how we distinguish libs andking a lot of illiberal

people that you would call that a believed7 in free speech and would defend it for themselves. bothls often had a very individualist approach to. what makes change in history. there intionally both liberals and liberals have been. i to economic and social inequality impinge freedom. and i wasn't thinking this i was reminded of this great quote from this french journalist france. some of you may have heard of who every word right. he said that though the law in its majesty forbids and poor alike to sleep under the bridges. so, you know especially and furthermore, just let me[v add

more thing and then i'll get you one thing. and that is that liberal has often been usenot by the right,e left. deso talk about their differ. what yin and you know as suggesd uncomplicated is to a an idea concept that liberalism that really developed out especially europe of feudal and early modern societies that didn't necessarily anything to do with liberalism, um, that eventually developed alongside of it time developed in relationship to it powerfully enough so that think liberalism itself and people regard themselves as liberal kind get entangled it. what i was really trying do in part was this you know, offer a view of u.s. history that these

centered that didn't deny that it was important that didn't try to make an argument that you know, sensibilities or movements or, you more or less important. but that it would be, i think, more valuable for us to understand american history as involving multiple political currents ■ysome of which had to do with liberalism and liberalism, some ofhi or the best they could to escape fromboth id liberalism. ah, and to seal types. and that's always problematic for historians not, it's problematic for some scientists, but ideal types don't necessarily work very well when you get on the groundçt and this book, you know, is really it's not an intellectual history. kind of a social histof ideas. it's this stuff in

particular historical how it's embraced and rejected and changed. think that in both cases, you know, people who study liberalism, recognize i mean, i use it in a political rather than in an economic way. they're obviously interconnected. there's lots of■yliberalism act. and what it is, you know, pheno? is it a product of the french revolution and, you know, whether say it's century versions of, modern liberalism, sometimes called corporate liberalism, what it's, you know, re itself. but i try to, you know, think about itcharacteristics which iu of widespread, if not universal rights bearingidea ofl

practice idea that a■ society should be organized by f institution. the idea of at least legally before law. and you know in many respects, you know, yo know in liberalism is a rejection of all of that. it's not necessaril conscious rejection from the beginning because that's how the siety and one of the things i think that's, you know, interested me times a small scale or attitudes that have long been associate let's say with or, you know, sn, liberal democracy in the future actually turned out to be very different on the ground. and know just to get to your

for example people who opposed the ratification of the cit there was kind of an epithet. youthey were interested in was, say, were, you know, interested in securing control also meant, you know, sometimes sometimes they were opposed to what they thought was a political system that would be distant from them, that would be too centralized and on. and so they seemed to kind of pushing back in aemocratic way. and to some extent they are. but what they were interested in doing was krelationships of powd hierarchyd of patrolling the borders of their communities outside orders. i mean, illiberalism, you know, is tied up with suspicions, people who are not like■e them their insistence on patrolling both potentially internal ble as well, as, you know,

and using expulsion, i mean, puritan, you know, towns in the 17th century up through, you know, of eulsi part of the kind of content of this, not to mention, you know, hostility native peoples and the termination to rid their territories of them. so i guess, again, it's sort of the illiberalism, unlike simply, you know, particular on, you know, fascism is lot of it quickly so that, you know, this is a■ book that does try to emphasize you know political volatility and it's volatile among social groups, volatility among individuals.

people do not fit, you very clearly into acertain social gr, you know, end6■ up in in somethg of a box. but it, i thi, allure to the kind of people together and involve the exclusion of otrs te exclusion is that really oftentimes the hea o think of os illiberalism. lowing on and i guess i have to illiberal was of illiberalism as a social i do but that the word populism ■designed to label aperspectivee

that is scale social activism from speak and y contrast, for example, i was thinking about votersuppression. well, there was very strong dtliberal. not a movement but certainly a force pushing voter suppression on the g people who had the appropriate knowledge and morals should be entitled to the franchise. and, youno i'm sure, you know, probably most people know that the you the southern victory in deprivi but of a right to vote was often rested on exactly those kind of claims he things ipeoplebe full citizel

mean i think it's good that you broughat you know, one of the things i got really interested in when thinking about how illiberalism of transforms itself is transformed looks precisely at this period. i mean, i, when i looked at progress ism, sort of the period between1919 20, which is gen rey seen as part of the birth of modern liberalism. what struck was the, you know, almost across the progressive spectrum, that spectrum was pretty considerable. nonetheless, t s be a an interest in what you might call social engineering. there was an interest in eugenics, which, you know, if you read the literature on progressivism. it's gells a sidebar, and yet wherever you in that. really gets back to linda's point, because what happens during the progressive period is

not and simply the most extreme version, which is the advent of jim crow political disenfranchisement, black people, segregation, even harsher regimes. but redefine fine politicalties, herbert example of this who was as a village. yeah. wh with, you know, teddy roosevelt and, his ne nationalism, who basically thought that, you bureaucratized.ught to be thess and that, you know, he was vy, very tough on what he called jeffersonian democracy, which was more local political participation, which from his point ofiew, trend tended toward corruption. and therefore, the idea of marginalizing people who were,

capable of exercising a franchise and participating i te thought, whoe national proto i mean, ihink that it's not you know, if you think of what's going on in this periodween eugenics other forms of social engineering scientific management which is really taking hold this period. you think about american imperialism, you think about, you know, the sort of the new ways the supreme court and the big federal government is giving its imprimatur. i mean, this< anticipate, you know, what's going to happen in europe in the 1920s. and not to mention as linda knows better than me, what in the united states in 19so, you a period where that's not alla

goin and where grew up in portland, oregon you know, thert included trying make occupatio the basis of apportionment i time.that's still so this is not the they are the only currents. i think that in a sense movement that operated atof a numerous levels. i mean it wacomovement in part. it was a movement of people who were tin redefine the nature of politics who were i mean, teddy talked a lot about, you know, the problem of enfeebled people, basically weighing the the capacities of the popun general. so you know, it helps us understand what ' l end of a los you know it's over a century of

decline and i think that's want to push a little bit on something you pointed out by using the a different word which is expertise and you wrote a about american■1s know well that in the progressive era there was a lot of move to the idea of that you do research and you present basis policy. supreme justice was inging, quote, scientific eurt to affect decis. a lot of that was fine, good. although i have to say. well, lexamples from my work thd me to some suspicion about.

for example in the early 20th century, hardrock mininwest begy were becoming ill with what today is called public airey thromb. not their word then the mine■@ managers believe that thy became ill because had poor hygiene at home and they organized ways of trying to educate people, particularly the wives of miners, about the way to raise children. and to do this and thatminers kt the case thehat was making them sick. and finally i find it really remarkable feminist hamilton, ws one of the founders of the modern public health. she went to these mines. she looked and she saw that it was the dust from so the rocks

that they were drilling into that was making them sick. contemporary example that came do with farm workers and farm workers wer aware of verys effects. widespread of aerosol pesticides. again, we had lon some, you may remember, of being assured that these things were ■h■]fe. these like ddt and so on. well, of course, it turned out that right. but once you start talking about expertise, it's difficult■:t0 to find that kind of vernacular expertise can enter the public discourse and deserve respect.

and i'll just say one more thing i want to tell you an occasion to be talking to a very mp and a politician who was conservative. problem with our government that we don't have enough smart people in government. if we had smart people, we wouldn't have these problems. i think that is related. can i say?ust yeah, i , vernacular is an important one tonteed, we thinkt expertise in certain terms about be educated and therefore and by extension look down upon4! communities that hae managed for a long time,s whethr it's medical or otherwise based on. you knowe have developed as communities.

and, youwe, you know, have to r, too, with the pushback that we saw during covi it is a deep hostility■ of, the medical profession, which oftentimes is, you know, treated, you know, groupsdescension or were dismissed above them. and the suspicion deep. they were obviously the other certainly the you know, the that reigns. and you know, we see this now againopposition to say affirmate action that need to go back to more merit to cratic system, one that, you know is very historically blind. and nonetheless, i think plays, you know, very well to a lot of audiences, does suggest the way in which people, you know, regardas, you know, brandishing liberal credentials. in fact, you know, find

themselves slipping back when you they need to deal, you know, reestablish order and they don't necessarily recognize power very. well, you know, and i think linda alludetoe of ts. that's true on both the left and the right. yeah. yeah. i at one point in the book, you used the phrase modernizing least i see that in■ part moving away or ■dexpanding traditional notice f first all freedom, which freedom from government and ou. right. and in modernizinge're all about government to increase freedom

at a certain level. you mean by freedom people's ability to function freely freely in the world. i think that liberals and illiberal allies can how? thinking recently about a very f police and police behavior at the samehave been aware from things i've read that there are at least in new yorklot of o live in the projects are women i'm talking poor women policing because they feel that they are mercy of a certain kind of gang behavior yet again. you k abortion and the liberal individuals. you amd

i'm notliberal is the notion tht aboron killing and you don't have right to do. ■w furthermore, more in n the immediate abortion, you need an expert, youee actually a docf people did abortions quite sa witut so this whole tension negative of freedom, what we and what we want government to do. and you actually mentioned a really good example of the illiberal approach to this. when you frank, who called nra, as part of the w

deal, part of rooltfascism okay. so this wasn'rifle? no, not the necessarily national natial recovery. yeah. you know, i think one of the features of ■%berali a changes s perspective on thents at nationl or local levels are seen as basicallyof various communitiesr linda, a great book on the in the 1920s. you talk a right wing movement. olitical movement that period may be one of the biggest right wingmovemen history. stronger the south than in the south, motivated by anti-catholic ism and

well as anti-racism that managed to get ow from the ground all way up to the supreme court and andhmou know, in the 1920s, i think there was a sense that the state, as it was, was in the service of people■ who, you know, concerned about a of the changes taking place, concern and at that point you know remember 1924 immigration h sets quotas and particularly sets very high restrictions .çagainst immigrants from southn and eastern europe, were described as the chinese of europe, meaning and soc bill. and we just had one little piece of quotas, the quota for all africa, north and south was 100.

and that doesn't change till 1965 with all sorts of consequences along the, you clearly one of the things that has transformed in recent times right■u tipping, sees, of point, and understands the collecting t populations that not include them. so from their point of view, disposition that might not have been, you so it is of the process forms lm change but you know they maintain some of the characteristics over time as well. to notion about what's a social movement, ibviol of us today that what we might

call a a movement. but i just he that is there eve when you thinkas a sial movement? i think, well, i think there were important liberal social movements. i mean, you think about abolitionism, you think about various rights struggle. i mean, i don't regard populism as a liberal movement, but it certainly, you know, was a movement that both critiqued the concenat wealth power in the united states that was trying to offer actually a program. unlike today's populists who are not interested, know there is simply interested in this, you know, in kind elites as mpele us, as the enemies, but have noriof the way which the inequalities

of wealth and are organizr partr changingmovement, you know, its successes organize itself around its to the■á reconceive function amendments and to ideas. i mean, one oe things that's certainly the case is that whateverap kind of principles that were laid down declaratioof i embraced most fully or ■$ti been denied them,e who are on the outside i mean, they're the ones who, you know d fully, whether they were involved in, more ic movements, you know, as a case in point or you they never talkedboutanybody their r.

they talked about expanding generally so to that extent, not all of these movements are in the sense that the combination of political and econom cri and programs might be social, they might be democratic socialist, you know, socialism at the very time of progressivism had a really interestingrst, say, 15 years of the 20th century, the eugene debs. but in the socialist party organized on the local level across country, had elected people toç local and state offie and where well in louisiana and texas, kansas, oklahoma, the and one of the interesting historical questions then i guess thomas to take up, which is how did the red become the red how take a political context out of people looking left and things

turn aro obviously they're not e same people, but nonless■mtion e kind of political memories and political legacies changed you know in such powerful ways. yeah, we don'e lot of time left, but i do want to ask you about where neo■ liberalism fits in because consider liberalism e and of well, you just tell me what you think. well how would you place that on apectrum? you know, i have a chapter in the book called neo liberals and beralism. to some, it starts with clinton's signing the crime bill and, you know, part of the war on drugs, war on crime that was, you know, crucial to development

oferation. and one of the things that's really the case is that wh■@e in getting the state out of a regulatory, they were very happy to g the protect the relationships of the marketplace. and they also not necessarily clinton per se, but they also were very suspicious of democracy theyad susdoubts abouc chance of realizing the krelation to powee after milton friedman when traveling down to talk to pinochet shortly after the# the coup that that destroyed the allende regime. there's a lot of other example don't see any problem and

embracing but are clilliberal you know dispositions and i might also addinclude you know,f eiti and the obsession of, you know, people who have been central to it as if they didn't.j actually depend the federal government for ever since world war two, that somehow or other are, you know, the■x■he these individualist champions. and yet, ynuou k that internet does, it's an incredible source of surveillance and personal exploitation mwe harvested the time in ways we do not and you know then more information are being sold elsewhere. i mean it's you and i, i is uating this, but this is if you want to talk

about a think is i someone here raises a really interesting question abouthe relationship between illiberal. illibel anti-intellectualism dou thinkha way equivalent or not? you know, that's a that is a great quen cause, you know, richard, who oe on centrao advance id of the liberal tradition. america was also interested in all so of examples of illiberalism. he you know, a book called the anti-intellectual ism in american life where he, you know, took examples over time, mostly more ones and alswjo was writing about the advent of the polical right in the late 1940ssm of of sorts

overlap with you know, illiberalism depending on exactly what it is. i mean can be forms of so-called anti ism that are really pushed back againstertise and the, you know, sort of of intellectual power that they represent. but nonetheless, if you read fstadt, he was certainly in what we would a radical. he was interested, you know, h of exciated populism of the late century for its negative g backward looking, xenophobic, anti-semitic■< wdschere aspects of the movement but tended to be, you know, o relatively so. i do think that, you know, i woulrt read hofstadter book andt also to recognize that antielalism is kind of a large and potentially term.

yeah a know, one other question is, can both liberals liberals be anti intellectual? but i want i want to on one thiu mentioned, but i'd like you to address more directly, and that is the relationship between what we would call mainstream conservative ism and illiberalism i, i couldn't help but mention a wonderful phrase from my former wonderful colleague marilyn young, who i can't remember. she said it or wrote it, but she said,re is the ruling class now that we need i'm botha marxist and a liberal long view. they're supposed to be stabilitf the of the political order and the society that seems to quite different from illiberal ism.

hink that illiberalism overlaps with certainly reactionary conservatism, which is based on notion inequalities. i don't think necessary conservatism in has freed itself from that. some are conservatives in some ways, but not in other ways. there people who are, you know, economic conservative is but are not necessarily conservates in on socialms know one of the things that just struck me as i was this and you know i guess i had't quite grasped it is that if you look at t erican history, um, you know, the reallunusua■ll moments are when libera the left are actually ruling are

actually power because for the most part, they're not. and for the most part, if you talk about, you know, defeats who know, all i mean, i don't o example other than the civil war when you know, a reactionary class was usd although they had good survivingof other examples there were arees and te liberals are fall out but are cu know they'reand i think one of e need to■gw1 uand in terms of what we're up against is that and th'substantial social base d always enormou■r

is the■p policing of private spaces like universities and social media that are private institutions@ thaserve as publit example of illiberalism? well, it can be, you know. various obligationso ect people who involved in■um and participate in them from or harassmentence and so policing, policing against, you know,arm that can come to people. but, you know,expand or, you knh

more restrictive. that is i mean, you know look, we're we're dealing with a time our universities really under and in some ways from rich you know just wanted to slap theires nowk that they de curriculum, not ins or cúihemistry, but mostly in, you, the humanities and some of the social sciences. i mean, this is you know, this is taking place. obviously are issues about, you know,onduct, which, you know, can important to establish a groundwork for peop tchallenge each other. but at the samee, you know, in the 1990s, there was a case at the university of pennsylvania of harassment of ce

president at the time, know estd of now which is calling for a lot of them, thought that thiwas absolutely outrageous. but i do think powerful word.