Forum (Room 250), Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics
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PHUMZILE MLAMBO-NGCUKA is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women. She was sworn into office on 19 August 2013 and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to this position, having devoted her career to issues of human rights, equality and social justice. Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka has worked in government and civil society, and with the private sector, and was actively involved in the struggle to end apartheid in her home country of South Africa. From 2005 to 2008, she served as Deputy President of South Africa, overseeing programmes to combat poverty and bring the advantages of a growing economy to the poor, with a particular focus on women. Prior to this, she served as Minister of Minerals and Energy from 1999 to 2005 and Deputy Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry from 1996 to 1999. She was a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 1996 as part of South Africa’s first democratic government. Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka began her career as a teacher and gained international experience as a coordinator at the World YWCA in Geneva, where she established a global programme for young women. She is the founder of the Umlambo Foundation, which supports leadership and education. A longtime champion of women’s rights, she is affiliated with several organizations devoted to education, women’s empowerment and gender equality. She has completed her PhD on education and technology at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.

Forum (Room 250), Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics
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JASON DEPARLE is a reporter for The New York Times and has written extensively about poverty and immigration. His book, American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare, was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Helen Bernstein Award from the New York City Library. He was an Emerson Fellow at New America. He is a recipient of the George Polk Award and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new book, A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st  Century, follows a Filipino family over three decades as they migrate to new lands and will themselves into a new global middle class.

133 S. 36th Street, Room 250 (The Forum) Map / Accessibility
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics
Free and Open to the Public / Food Provided
Co-sponsored with The Penn Program on Regulation, Penn Law, and Penn Political Science

Attendees are encouraged to read Prof. Fishkin's Paper, available here.

DEMOCRACY REQUIRES A CONNECTION TO THE “WILL OF THE PEOPLE.” How is that possible in a world of “fake news,” relentless advocacy, partisan polarization and efforts at public manipulation? “Deliberative Polling” is a research program that applies citizen deliberation in depth with credible random samples to policy contexts where their conclusions can make a difference. This talk will draw on examples  from more than 100 cases of Deliberative Polls in 29 countries. What are the criteria for evaluating these projects? What policy impact do they have? What are the ingredients for successful implementation? Some notable cases include the US (“America in One Room”)  Mongolia (where there is now a law requiring Deliberative Polling for constitutional amendments), Texas (where the use of Deliberative Polling led directly to dramatic investments in renewable energy), South Korea (which recently used the process to make the final decision on the construction of two nuclear reactors) and Iceland (where the process was used in 2019 as an input by the government for constitutional reform).

JAMES S. FISHKIN holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy. He is the author of Democracy When the People Are Thinking (Oxford 2018), When the People Speak (Oxford 2009), Deliberation Day (Yale 2004 with Bruce Ackerman) and Democracy and Deliberation (Yale 1991).

Room 350, Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics (133 S. 36th Street)
Food provided / Free and open to the public

Hajer Al-Faham (Penn Political Science)
The Politics of Surveillance in American Muslim Communities

Mo Torres (Harvard Dept. of Sociology)
What "Emergency" Does: Democratic Decline and the Politics of Inevitability

FOR POLITICAL SCIENTISTS WHO CONDUCT FIELDWORK in environments marked by civil conflict, state violence, or authoritarianism, it is widely acknowledged that everyday political conditions occupy a crucial role in the research process, as researchers have an ethical obligation to protect research subjects and communities from repercussions. Drawing on data collected from a case study of Arab and Black American Muslim communities, HAJER AL-FAHAM shows that even in the context of non-authoritarian and putatively democratic regimes, such as the United States, everyday political conditions have profound implications for the research process. She finds that surveillance operates as a two-stage political mechanism, linking politics to the research process that unfolded in fieldwork with American Muslims. First, it disturbs the research terrain by restricting the sample of respondents who select into participation. Second, it colors the responses of participants throughout the interviews. This finding indicates that for scholars of American politics, a significant challenge moving forward, is to identify and account for the relevant political conditions shaping the study of American Muslims and other vulnerable populations.

WHAT IS A “FINANCIAL EMERGENCY,”and what does the discourse of emergency accomplish in the realm of politics? MO TORRES considers the case of the Rust Belt, where former manufacturing giants like Detroit, Flint, and other race-class subjugated cities today stand largely in ruin. For three decades, the state of Michigan’s primary form of aid to post-industrial cities has come in the form of the complete cancelation of local democracy. Michigan’s “emergency financial manager”(EFM) laws replace the elected mayors and city council members of any city deemed to be in a state of economic emergency with a governor-appointed “emergency financial manager” who assumes total control over all local operations. Using archival data and original interviews, Torres seeks to understand how emergency politics work in practice, and what they achieve politically. He shows that emergency politics follow a logic of inevitability, where policy elites demonstrate a hesitant stance to promote anti-democratic politics that simply must be adopted. Behind the scenes, however, the politics of emergency promote a political agenda—in this case, privatization—that is in fact championed by supporters of EFM. Emergency politics obscure the policymaking process, embodying what I call politics without policies.

College Hall, 4th Floor (Philomathean Society)
Food provided / Free and open to the public