We at the Clough Center are deeply grateful for The Heights’ coverage of our 2025 Fall Colloquium earlier this month. While the article rightly highlights the serious concerns raised by the speakers, it’s also worth noting that many expressed cautious optimism about the resilience of American democracy.
Take, for example, our Director, Professor Jonathan Laurence. In his opening remarks, he acknowledged the democratic backsliding evident in countries once considered emerging or consolidated democracies. At the same time, he reminded us that “Constitutional democracies [are] works in progress, written on parchment not etched in stone. Subject to amendment and interpretation.”
It falls on us, therefore, to continue refining our own constitutional democracy by confronting its failings. This sentiment is echoed by Professor Berman, who reminds us that “no matter how well designed, no matter how long lived our democratic institutions are, they are not free floating. Their resilience depends on the continued support of citizens – and when they start losing that support we should expect to see the possibility of a…lack of resilience.” Democracy’s resilience, then, isn’t automatic. Each generation is asked to reassert the values, institutions, and sentiment that forms the foundation of our constitutional democracy.
Professor Hwang’s discussion of the 2024 South Korean martial law crisis illustrated how ordinary citizens can resist efforts to undermine democracy while inspiring institutions to act, even if they arrived late. From South Korea’s example, we can draw encouragement to challenge threats to democracy, including those that may emerge within our own government.
While it is vital to acknowledge the warnings about democratic decline in the United States, it is equally important to recognize the opportunities before us to reassert and strengthen our system. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that American democracy is in danger of decline. It falls on us, the citizens, the ‘demos’ as Professor Bartlett explained, to keep having these
conversations, to show up, and to pull ourselves back from the brink. Meeting this moment requires the same spirit demonstrated by the generation of Americans who founded this great experiment, and perhaps we can find some courage in the words of one of its most passionate advocates, Thomas Paine, who wrote in The American Crisis, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”