more intellectual courage, thoughtfulness and sober wisdom that our speaker tonight, doctor francis fukuyama. francis is a political scientist, political economist and best-selling author who serves as distinguished senior fellow at standard universities institute for international studies as well as the mosque director of its center on democracy, development and the rule of law . he previously taught at the paul minsky school of studies at john hopkins as well as the george mason university goal of public policy. is a researcher at the rand corporation, deputy director of the state department's policy planning staff and in addition to his latest book which we've invited him to address tonight, he is the author of political order and political delay, the origins of political order, perhaps his most famous the end of history and the lack of man, trust and america at the crossroads. he's a council member of the international forum for democratic studies, a fellow of the world academy for arts and sciences and advisory council member of the democracy fund and an alumni of harvard university whe

with us now is francis fukuyama, a fellow at stanford university.y much for coming in. give us a definition of identity politics. identity has to do with this feeling that you have an inner worth, often connected to your membership in a group. that is not being adequately respected or disregarded by the surrounding society. it draws you into politics because you want people to recognise you and to accord you the dignity and respect you think you are worth. that sounds like it can be a fine thing in the politicalfield. the problem, it seems to me, comes when people in different identity groups see the other groups as a threat. that is a problem. if you think your identity depends on the hostility to other groups, or if you think your differences what needs to be recognised rather than what you hold in common, for example, with other citizens in a democratic society, that becomes very problematic. how are you arguing that identity politics can be a good thing? first of all, identity is a fluid concept. we can shift identities. they tend to get smaller

eastern, stanford university professor francis fukuyama talks about his book "identity: the demand forignity and the politics of resentment." >> that's the nice thing about identity. it doesn't have to be fixed. it doesn't have to be based on biology. it can be shaped by leaders, by school, by education, by the way we talk about our shared history and our shared values. and i think that's an important task that lies ahead of us. >> and on sunday, at 9:00 p.m. eastern, on afterwords, emory university african-american studies chair, carol anderson, discusses her book, "one person, no vote." how voter suppression is destroying our democracy. she's interviewed by democratic congressman jamie raskin. >> it's been extremely contested and it's been violently challenged at many points, right. >> yes, absolutely. so -- and one of the things i talk about is that america is really an aspirational nation. and it's in those aspirations, we, the people, we hold these truths to be self-evident. leader of the free world. those kinds of aspirations. it's based on those aspirations and not those kind of

so, that's yascha, and i think the club will recognize our moderator tonight, francis fukuyama, who hasany times before. he's currently a senior fellow at stanford's freeman spogli institute for international studies and his new book on identity, his "identity politics" will be coming out in september. so, thank you very much, francis. thank you very much. ok, thank you.

and we wrap up our prime time programming at 11 eastern with francis fukuyama's thoughts on how to move past identity politics and return to civil discourse. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. 48 hours of nonfiction be authors and books -- the nonfiction authors and books every weekend. television for serious readers. a reminder that this weekend's full schedule is available on our web site, booktv.org. >>> and now here's matthew hennessey discussing generation x. >> so this book started out as a city journal article. i don't know if you know that. it was first on the web site as a little bitty article, then it was a longer article, so i have to thank brian for allowing me to develop the idea. and i want to thank paul for listening to me rail about things like the universal basic income and the amazon echo in his office before any of it had any hopes of becoming a book. and i also want to thank my friends at encounter for giving me the opportunity the, of course. i know that a lot of you probably attended the james w. wilson lecture a few weeks ago in which harvard professor