2024 Harmsworth Lecture: The Roots of American Authoritarianism

The 2024 Harmsworth Lecture:
The Roots of American Authoritarianism
will be given by Professor Lisa McGirr (Harvard)

The United States has long been associated with liberal principles, but the nation has also nurtured deep pockets of authoritarianism.  With a broad angle of vision across the past century, McGirr teases out the leaders, movements, and regional strong-holds of an American authoritarian tradition. She excavates the historical conditions that have fueled these movements, arguing that the growing power of authoritarianism within the Republican Party poses an urgent peril to the United States as a pluralist and multiracial democracy.

Lisa McGirr is the 2024-25 Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History in the Faculty of History and Rothermere American Institute, in association with The Queen's College.

She is the Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University and the Director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. Her research interests bridge the fields of social and political history and focus especially on collective action, state building, and conservative movements.