Misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories and political polarization are not new, but have taken on greater power and reach thanks to the Internet. In many ways, Americans can now appeal to their own competing sources of information and opinion, which yield competing realities—and threaten our ability to reach compromises on important civic goals. Christine Rosen will discuss how to deal with the consequences: Can we revive the public square and encourage civil disagreement and debate while protecting free speech? What role should the so‑called digital town square play in a healthy democracy? What role do communities, culture, and the media play in fostering or undermining healthy civic dialogue?

Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, technology and culture, and feminism. Concurrently she is a columnist for Commentary magazine and one of the cohosts of The Commentary Magazine Podcast. She is also a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and a senior editor in an advisory position at The New Atlantis. She received her Ph.D. in American intellectual history from Emory University.

A prolific writer, Rosen is often published in the popular press. Her opinion pieces, articles, and reviews have appeared in Commentary, the New Republic, the New York Times, MIT Technology Review and the New England Journal of Medicine, among other outlets. Her books include The Extinction of Experience (W. W. Norton, forthcoming); My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood, which was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by the Washington Post; and Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Program on Freedom and Free Societies and Voices for Liberty, with thanks also to the generous support of Michael J. Millette ’87 and the Millette family as well as that of the Triad Foundation and other donors.

A video of this event can be watched here.