Tag: u.s. politics

Yascha Mounk recently spoke as part of the Rotman School of Management’s #shiftdisturbers series. Drawing from his book The People vs. Democracy, his fact-packed talk explored the populist phenomenon, with examples from around the world: how it gains power, how it fails people, and the three alarmingly familiar similarities all populist uprisings share.

To learn more about booking Yascha Mounk for a speaking event, contact The Lavin Agency. href=”https:>

Democracy is in decline in the West, especially among young people. They don’t trust their politicians and they don’t see themselves reflected in policy. Harvard professor Yascha Mounk’s new book The People vs. Democracy (recently excerpted in The Atlantic) explores this alarming phenomenon—and according to a glowing Kirkus review, proposes “provocative…optimistic…reasonable remedies,” to combat it.

As a speaker, Mounk’s plain, captivating language illuminates the very real ways that liberal democracy is being threatened every day. He goes beyond the basic description of populism—masses mobilized against a perceived elite—to describe both how we arrived at the Trump administration, and where we can go from here.

His keynotes are timely, necessary, important; they probe at the knot of economics, ethnicity, technology, insecurity, and media that brought us to this point, and demonstrate exactly how we can fix it: by asking questions, taking nothing for granted, and standing up for what’s right.

The People vs. Democracy comes out on March 5^th. To book Yascha Mounk, or another keynote speaker on U.S. and Global Politics, contact The Lavin Agency.  

David Rohde has covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bosnia. But tracking the polarization and propaganda of Trump’s presidency for NewYorker.com has been one of the toughest challenges of his career. On stage, he explains why “original, ethical, fact-based reporting” is more vital than ever.

David Rohde: Online News Director, NewYorker.com

Rohde works at the crossroads of contemporary politics. Since May 2017, as its Online News Director, he’s expanded The New Yorker’s online coverage of the White House — not to keep up with every claim or distortion, he says, but to preserve “the heart of journalism.” And that’s clear-eyed, daily investigations into the broad patterns of the administration. Under his watch, NewYorker.com has remained a bastion of fact-checked reporting in an era of ‘fake news.’ And it’s published stories that not only unseated White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, but revealed a long-standing criminal investigation of Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr.

David Rohde: Award-Winning Foreign Correspondent

Rohde has worked at ABC News, The Christian Science Monitor, Reuters, The Atlantic, and The New York Times — often abroad, in the field, experiencing the dangers of political extremism as a foreign correspondent. His investigations in Bosnia — his discovery of the mass graves of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, specifically, recorded in his book Endgame (called “essential” by The Guardian) — earned him the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His next Pulitzer came from covering Afghanistan and Pakistan at The New York Times. In both Bosnia and Afghanistan, Rohde was held captive by Serbs and the Taliban, respectively — and both times, threatened with execution.

The Lavin Agency is a speakers bureau representing some of the brightest minds in politics. From journalists to broadcasters, editors to academics, every thinker we represent has something unique and vital to say about our fraught moment. For more information on college speakers like David Rohde — luminaries like Nikole Hannah-Jones, Nicholas Thompson, Emily Bazelon, Yascha Mounk, or George Packer — contact The Lavin Agency today.

In Insane Clown President, author and Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi delivers a scathing record of the 2016 presidential election, both a postmortem and vital look ahead as the new guard moves in. 

Previously, Taibbi turned his unforgiving eye on the American wealth gap in The Divide (2014), which The New York Times deemed “impossible to put down.” In Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus, Taibbi accounts for Trump’s exploits, reveals how the pillars of democracy became compromised, and what part the media played in their collapse.  

Comprising timely reports from Taibbi’s travels following both the politicians and voters of the 2016 election, Insane Clown President illuminates not just what brought us to where we are now, but who we can be moving forward in the years to come.  

“The media and politicians had spent so much time with each other that they lost touch with regular people, and Trump capitalized on that. He made us in the media villains, representative of this out of touch, ivory tower political culture,” Taibbi recently told CBC News’ Wendy Mesley.

In an excerpt from the book, Taibbi remarks “…when you actually think about it, it's not funny. Given what's at stake, it's more like the opposite, like the first sign of the collapse of the United States as a global superpower. Twenty years from now, when we’re all living like prehistory hominids and hunting rats with sticks, we’ll probably look back at this moment as the beginning of the end.” 

Insane Clown President is available now. Here’s the description from the publisher, Spiegel & Grau:

From the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the aimless Hillary Clinton campaign, across the flailing media coverage and the trampled legacy of Obama, this is the story of ordinary voters forced to bear witness to the whole charade. At the centre of it all, “a bumbling train wreck of a candidate who belched and preened his way past a historically weak field” who, improbably, has taken control of the world’s most powerful nation.

In this groundbreaking battery of dispatches from the heartland of America, Matt Taibbi tells the full story of the Trump phenomenon, from its tragi-comic beginnings to the apocalyptic election. Full of sharp, on-the-ground reporting and gallows humour, his incisive analysis goes beyond the bizarre and disturbing election to tell a wider story of the apparent collapse of American democracy. Taibbi saw the essential themes right from the start: the power of spectacle over truth; the end of a shared reality on the left and right; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism.

This is essential and hilarious reading that explores how the new America understands itself, and about the future of the world just beyond the horizon. 

Interested in booking Matt Taibbi to speak at your next event? Contact The Lavin Agency, his exclusive speakers bureau.

Donald Trump has led the Republican Party to unexpected success—baffling pollsters across the world and driving people of all political persuasions to seek out expert opinion. What does a Trump victory mean for international relations and global health? How will it alter world and domestic economies? What will it mean for immigration, women’s health, or the environment?

You deserve informed opinion. So, for your next keynote or conference, invite one of Lavin’s exclusive speakers—political analysts, journalists, comedians, cultural critics, and authors—to help your team navigate turbulent economic change and adapt to radical political transformation. Below, we’ve gathered writing from George Packer, James Fallows, Wajahat Ali, Negin Farsad, and John Ibbitson in the immediate aftermath of this week’s historical event.

“We live as tribes”: George Packer in The New Yorker and The New York Times 

As one of our best journalists, George Packer offers up indispensible and often paradigmatic takes on American politics. It’s no wonder, then, that The New York Times has listed his National Book Award-winning and bestselling treatise The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America as a key book you need to read to understand Trump’s win. “It’s possible that the book that best explains the American that elected Donald J. Trump appeared more than three years ago,” writes The Times. “Packer took a wide-angled look at this country’s institutions and mores and was appalled by what he found.”

In a similar vein, last month The New Yorker published Packer’s essay “Hillary Clinton and the Populist Revolt.” This long-form article outlines, with Packer’s signature style, how the Democratic party lost the faith and endorsement of the white working class (and how the Republicans “exploited it”). A must-read for anyone seeking to comprehend the political and cultural forces making America what it is. Packer writes:
 

“More and more, we live as tribes. It’s easier and more satisfying to hunker down with your cohort on social media than to take up Obama’s challenge and get in someone else’s head. What’s striking is the widespread feeling that liberal values are no longer even valuable—a feeling shared by many people who think of themselves as liberals.”

“Entertainment is always going to be more interesting than news”: James Fallows on NPR 

Atlantic national correspondent James Fallows has followed this campaign like few other journalists. With his “Daily Trump” blog, which recorded the myriad ways Trump broke with all convention, to his American Futures project, in which he toured small towns and cities across the country to report on our renaissance of innovation, Fallows is a reliable pulse-point for informed opinion, nation-wide. Yesterday, he took to NPR’s Fresh Air to speak with Terry Gross on “How Trump Broke Campaign Norms But Still Won the Election.”  Throughout the forty-minute interview, Fallows reflects on the many contradictions—things are terrible nationally, but things are getting much better locally!—he learned from talking to ordinary Americans. And, of course, he spoke on the unique nature of this election, and how it stumped even the most informed pollsters:

“None of us are going anywhere—yet”: Wajahat Ali in The New York Times and The Huffington Post

Playwright, journalist, and social entrepreneurship incubator Wajahat Ali turned to two outlets in the early hours after our stunning election results. The first was with The New York Times, for which he offered crucial insight into what it feels like to live as a “Muslim in Trump’s America.” The short article, which transforms into a letter addressed to the hypothetical Trump supporter, is a graceful and poignant appeal to empathy and collaboration. “Instead of being despondent,” Ali writes, “I am willing myself to be more passionate, energized and empowered for the sake of my children. That’s the one relief and cause of joy. We’re all still here. And none of us are going anywhere—yet.”

And, in this Huffington Post video, he again appeals to the better angels of our shared nature and shared values in order to rebuild in the wake of this divisive election. Watch Ali offer up a Muslim-American perspective on where we stand, and where we can go from here. 

To book keynote speakers George Packer, James Fallows, Wajahat Ali, Negin Farsad, or John Ibbitson for your next conference, contact The Lavin Agency, their exclusive representation.
 

“This presidential debate will be the most extreme contrast that we’ve ever had,” says Atlantic columnist James Fallows. “Right brain versus left brain, gut versus any part of the brain at all, instinct versus experience, and of course, at the most primal level, woman versus man.” The stage is set, and on the evening of September 26, the curtain rises: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will square off in the first of three nationally televised Presidential debates that may decide the future of the nation. In The Atlantic’s October cover story, Fallows reflects on the impact of Presidential debates past—from Kennedy-Nixon in ’60, to Bush-Gore in ’00—and tells us what to expect from this year’s edition.

Accompanying the cover story is a five-minute video narrated by Fallows, and if it doesn’t get you excited about the debates, nothing will. “The best way to judge presidential debates is just to turn the sound off,” Fallows says in the clip. “There’s a long, long saga of the images from debates mattering more than anything else,” he continues, citing 1960, when John F. Kennedy looked suave and composed, and Richard Nixon, by contrast, was sweaty and disheveled and “looked like hell.” We all know the outcome of that one.

But it may not come down to appearances alone. Up to this point, says Fallows, “Donald Trump’s entire approach to debates has been not simply that I win, but that I humiliate you.” However, he’s yet to face Clinton, a seasoned debater “who, arguably, is at her best when being attacked by men.”

Fallows is also the author of the “Trump Time Capsule” column, a daily chronicle of the unorthodox Republican’s words and actions leading up to the election. This marks his fifth consecutive Atlantic pre-debate cover story. One of the most experienced political writers in America, he has written for the magazine for nearly forty years, following a stint as the youngest Presidential chief speechwriter in American history.

“The presidential debates are the one chance that people get to see in real time, unscripted, the two candidates face-to-face, and you never really know what’s going to happen. This year in particular, it’s hard to imagine how this debate will not really matter.”

To have James Fallows give a keynote at your next conference or event, contact The Lavin Agency, his exclusive representative for speaking engagements.

Molly Crabapple, stunning visual artist and author of Drawing Blood, has illustrated a short film for Jay Z, and it’s on the front page of The New York Times’ website. It’s called “A History of the War on Drugs,” and in it, Jay and Crabapple decry the policies brought about by the war on drugs, beginning with the Nixon administration and leading all the way up to modern policing and incarceration. Here’s what the Times says about it:

This short film, narrated by Jay Z (Shawn Carter) and featuring the artwork of Molly Crabapple, is part history lesson about the war on drugs and part vision statement. As Ms. Crabapple’s haunting images flash by, the film takes us from the Nixon administration and the Rockefeller drug laws—the draconian 1973 statutes enacted in New York that exploded the state’s prison population and ushered in a period of similar sentencing schemes for other states—through the extraordinary growth in our nation’s prison population to the emerging aboveground marijuana market of today. We learn how African-Americans can make up around 13 percent of the United States population—yet 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations, even though they use and sell drugs at the same rate as whites.

But the message comes across much more vividly accompanied by Crabapple’s time-lapse drawings and Jay’s impassioned narration. See for yourself below.

To book Molly Crabapple, visual artist and author of Drawing Blood, as a keynote speaker on art and activism, contact The Lavin Agency speakers bureau.