Kadish Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory: Steven Hahn, New York University

Illiberal America and the Invention of the Liberal Tradition

Abstract 

A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking “That’s not us.” But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology.

Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis.

About Steven Hahn, New York University:

Steven Hahn received his B.A. at the University of Rochester, his M.A. and Ph.D. at Yale University, and is currently Professor of History at New York University. Previously he was on the faculties of the University of Delaware (1979-1981), the University of California San Diego (1981-1998), Northwestern University (1998-2003), and the University of Pennsylvania (2003-2016), where he was the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of History. Hahn is a specialist on the international history of slavery, emancipation, and race, on the construction of American empire, on the social and political history of the “long nineteenth century” in the United States, and on the history of social movements. He has written for The Nation, Dissent, The New Republic, Le Monde Diplomatique, Nexos (Mexico City), and the New York Times, as well as for the American Historical Review, the Journal of Southern History, and Past and Present. Hahn has held fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, CA), and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers (New York Public Library).

Hahn is the author of The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (winner of the Allan Nevins Prize and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award), A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Bancroft Prize, and Merle Curti Prize), The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom (delivered as the Nathan I. Huggins Lectures at Harvard), and A Nation without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910. He is also co-author and co-editor of The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation: Essays in the Social History of Rural America, and Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation. Land and Labor in 1865. Most recently Hahn has published a two-volume U.S. history textbook entitled Forging America: A Continental History (2023) and Illiberal America: A History (2024)

Hahn has been actively involved in projects making history and liberal arts education available to a wider public, and now teaches regularly in, and sits on the steering committee of, NYU’s Prison Education Program. From 2011-2020, he served on the Pulitzer Prize Board, and for the last two years was co-chair of it. Most recently, he served as elected president of the Southern Historical Association.

About the workshop:

A workshop for presenting and discussing work in progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to provide an opportunity for students to engage with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues of potential interest to philosophers and political theorists.

The theme for Spring 2025 is “Critics of Liberalism,” and we will host scholars working in Philosophy, Law, History, and Political Science. Our underlying concern will be the normative critiques of substantive liberal ideas from both the left and right, as well as staunch defenders of liberalism.

This semester the workshop is co-taught by Joshua Cohen and Desmond Jagmohan.