# A Conversation with Suzanne Mettler

Suzanne Mettler, political scientist from Cornell University, will be Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance in 2023-2024. The event will focus on her recent book, "Four Threats," where she and her co-author Robert C. Lieberman explore five moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression and Watergate. These episodes risked profound-even fatal-damage to the American democratic experiment. From this history, four distinct characteristics of disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power-alone or in combination-have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment in American politics is that all four conditions exist.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2022
- By: John W. Kluge Center (library Of Congress)
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2024697915/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2024697915?play=1)