Common Ground

Today’s episode of Common Ground features George H Nash, an historian and author whose book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 has largely defined academic understanding of intellectual conservatism for the last thirty years. Today, Nash explains the development as well as the fracture of conservatism in America, and offers some suggestions for conservatives who want to regain their bearings in the age of Trump. Few people have so influentially described the changing landscape of American politics, or helped a political group define their own place on that landscape as our guest, George Nash. Nash is, to be sure, highly regarded in the academy; at the same time, it’s hard to overstate his impact on conservatives themselves. Jonah Goldberg, a columnist at NATIONAL REVIEW, has called Nash’s work “indispensible” and admits that he’s read Nash’s major work at least “thirty-seven times.” Likewise, The American Conservative has called Nash “the preeminent historian of the intellectual

This episode features a May 17, 2016 interview with Ian Millhiser, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Editor of ThinkProgress Justice, and author of Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted. In the past year, we’ve seen a lot of drama on the Supreme Court. In 2015, the Court decided in Obergefell v Hodges that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. In 2016, the hugely influential conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died; and, in his wake, Senate Republicans have refused to hold hearings to consider President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, the federal judge Merrick Garland. These major events have brought attention to the Court and its legacy. Ian Millhiser’s book Injustices takes up that legacy, but certainly doesn’t glorify it. Millhiser’s main contention: “Time and time again, the justices have taken the trust our Constitution places in them and wielded it to comfort the comfortable and afflict the

In this episode, we hear a May 18, 2016 interview with Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, critic-in-residence at Georgetown University, and author of So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. Corrigan talks about the life and work of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, and describes to host Joseph Hogan just what exactly makes a Great American Novel so, well, great. Finally, Corrigan discusses the state of literary criticism and the teaching of literature today, and examines the place contemporary literature has in the national conversation. Sensitive Content: Description of suicide from 10:00 to 10:50.

In this introductory episode, we listen to a keynote address by Michael Ignatieff, the Edward R. Murrow Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and former Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, delivered at the Hauenstein Center in April, 2016. Ignatieff has a strong critique of American politics today – he condemns our politicians’ tendency toward spectacle over substance, especially this year, 2016, and accuses pundits on the left and right of exaggerating and exacerbating our differences. As remedy, Ignatieff prescribes a form of principled centrism. He revives and slightly revises the old idea of the vital center, defining it as the place where the left and right clash and collide, but sometimes do come together.

In this episode, we hear a May 19, 2016 interview with Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative. In 2002, a small group of writers and politicians on the right, including Reagan’s former senior advisor Pat Buchanan, founded a magazine called The American Conservative. Established in opposition to the Iraq War, the magazine would feature the writing of traditionalist or paleoconservatives: that is, thinkers on the right who, unlike the so-called conservative establishment, generally detest military adventurism abroad and think that American culture has sadly neglected its roots in the cultural and religious tradition of the West. Though not as widely circulated as mainstream conservative publications such as National Review, The American Conservative has a loyal following on the right, and is known, in the words of conservative commentator Reihan Salam, “as a sharp critic of the conservative mainstream.” In this interview, Dan McCarthy describes his magazine’s role as a critic of the mainstream r

In this episode, EJ Dionne Jr., a columnist at the Washington Post, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and frequent commentator at NPR, MSNBC, and PBS, talks about his most recent book, Why the Right Went Wrong. In his book, EJ tracks the fracture of the Republican Party from the Goldwater Movement in the early 60s all the way up to Donald Trump. In our conversation, EJ outlines that fracture and emphasizes the significance of Trump’s revolt on the right. We discussed the Trumpification of the Right, the past and future of American conservatism, and what Burkean or moderate conservatives such as David Brooks or Michael Gerson should do in the face of a Trump takeover. This interview was recorded on May 17, 2016.

Common Ground, the podcast of the Hauenstein Center, explores the cultural and political landscape shared by the left and right. Every other week, Joseph Hogan, the podcast’s host, talks with public intellectuals, political leaders, scholars, critics, and writers-at-large about American life, ideas, and identities. Soon to be published, Common Ground can be found on iTunes by searching for “Common Ground Initiative.”