RGSCP Grant Recipients

A theatrical exploration of the New York Times best-selling book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the play, devised by UNH students, delved into the book’s examination of how we have arrived at this moment in our democracy. As stated in the Wall Street Journal’s review; “The authors argue, with good evidence, that democracies aren’t destroyed because of the impulses of a single man; they are, instead, degraded in the course of a partisan tit for tat dynamic that degrades norms over time until one side sees an opening to deliver the death blow.” The result of more than twenty years of studying the breakdown of democracies from the 1930s to the present, the book’s authors have provided an artistic springboard to understand how democracies die, and how ours can not only be saved, but thrive.The play was part of a larger program, How Democracies Die/Thrive, that featured speakers and panels leading up to the production.

This RGSCP-supported project focused on the development of an event that challenged participants to ask consider questions about plagiarism, citation, the transfer of ideas from one scholarly work to the next, and, more broadly, how we know what we know. The panel responded to the highly publicized resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, a political scientist by training, in the midst of numerous plagiarism allegations, as well as the conservative backlash against Gay’s testimony at a congressional hearing on rising anti-semitism on college campuses. Planning for the panel was led by the four faculty panelists/moderator (Profs. Emily Baer, Madhavi Devasher, and Jen Spindel from political science, and Prof. Eleta Exline from Dimond Library). The panelists drew on their own experience researching and publishing scholarly work in political science, as well as advising student research, to offer insights and raise questions about why some ideas are privileged (and cited) over others, the politics of citation, and how to prevent – and respond to –  plagiarism allegations in your own work. 

Organized by an interdisciplinary group from UNH’s History, Sociology, Education, Classics, History, and Italian Studies departments, plus AAUP-UNH, this Teach-In drew on the expertise and experiences of the speakers to provide students and the public with a thoughtful discussion of the role of organized labor in local and national context. 

Several UNH faculty and union members spoke at the Teach-In, including Prof. Cliff Brown, Prof. Robert Ford (UNH Law), and Prof. Catherine Moran. In addition, three invited speakers from outside UNH shared their expertise: Prof. Aviva Chomsky of Salem State University (MA), Prof. Steve Striffler of UMASS Boston; and Prof. Maryanne Trasciatti of Hofstra University. 

After the panel presentations, there was ample Q & A from the audience and, at the end of the event, discussion circles were facilitated by Prof. Jen Borda of the Civil Discourse Lab.