Mitchell Lecture to address populist alliances in an authoritarian era

The U.S. today faces what is widely viewed as a crisis of democratic backsliding, experts say, spurred by a right-wing populist political movement.

Common ways of understanding why this is happening fail to answer critical questions: How can right-wing populist leaders claim to be in favor of the working class, yet retain the latter’s support even when they support policies favoring plutocrats and undermine institutions designed to empower workers? Why are the richest leaders of U.S. technology companies, famous for their secular libertarianism, politically aligned with Christian nationalists who want to impose their socially conservative views on others? Why are they increasingly attracted to authoritarian politics, even though this means they must subordinate themselves to the arbitrary rule of the president?

This spring’s James McCormick Mitchell Lecture, to be delivered by University of Michigan faculty member Elizabeth Anderson, will provide an explanation for these inconsistencies. Her talk, “The Protestant Work Ethic and the Roots of Populist Authoritarianism,” will address how these patterns make sense when viewed through an authoritarian reinterpretation of the Protestant work ethic and the psychology of submission within authoritarian systems.

It will take place from 2:30-4:30 p.m. Feb. 27 in the Charles B. Sears Law Library in O’Brian Hall, North Campus.

The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception. Registration is required.

“Elizabeth Anderson is a renowned philosopher who speaks profoundly, yet accessibly and with great urgency, to the essential questions of our time: the ethical limits of markets; the meaning of equality in a democratic society; the sweeping, arbitrary power workers endure across many areas of their lives by the hands of employers,” says Paul Linden-Retek, associate professor of law and chair of the Mitchell Lecture Committee.

“She recenters for us in our spring Mitchell Lecture the tensions at the heart of right-wing populist authoritarianism, which sees a curious marriage of techno-plutocrats, charismatic politicians appealing to the working class, and religious nationalists. In illuminating a coherent logic underlying these seeming contradictions — drawing our attention in particular to Weber’s notion of the Protestant work ethic — Professor Anderson offers us an expansive and useful understanding of how our politics have come to be as they are and why our crisis of democracy is as unyielding as it is.”

Anderson is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Gender Studies, as well as professor of law, at the University of Michigan, where she specializes in moral, social and political philosophy, feminist theory, social epistemology, and the philosophy of economics and the social sciences.

A former student of John Rawls — whose work helped shape modern political philosophy — Anderson is the recipient of both the Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Foundation’s prestigious “genius grant.”

The Mitchell Lecture Series was endowed in 1950 by a gift from Lavinia A. Mitchell in memory of her husband, James McCormick Mitchell, an 1897 graduate of the Buffalo Law School. Mitchell Lecture programs have brought many distinguished speakers to UB, including Derrick Bell, Devon Carbado, Paul Freund, Lawrence Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Sheila Jasanoff, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Llewellyn, Stuart Macaulay, Catharine MacKinnon and Richard Posner.