Based his new book co-authored with Dennis Hale, Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism, Professor Landy’s talk will aim to counter the increasingly fashionable diatribes against the Constitution by law professors, journalists and political scientists who claim it is “broken”, “obsolete”, paralyzing, irredeemable etc. The talk’s larger purpose is to explain why the Constitution is especially well constructed to enable America to resist the threats to the survival of republican democracy posed by the problems this modern state must face, amongst which are massive size and religious, ethnic, racial and ideological diversity.

Marc Landy is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He has a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D Government from Harvard University. He was the recipient of the 2009 Teaching Award chosen by the student members of the Boston College Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. He is the author (with Sidney Milkis) of Presidential Greatness (Kansas U. Press, 2000), The Environmental Protection Agency From Nixon to Clinton: Asking the Wrong Questions (with Marc Roberts and Stephen Thomas) (Oxford University Press 1994), and the textbook American Government: Enduring Principles, Critical Choices (Cambridge University Press, 2019), now in its fourth edition. He is an editor of Creating Competitive Markets: The Politics and Economics of Regulatory Reform (Brookings Institution Press, 2007); Seeking the Center: Politics and Policymaking at the New Century (Georgetown University Press, 2001); and The New Politics of Public Policy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), and he has authored popular as well as scholarly articles on the Presidency and executive power, federalism, environmental regulation, the nature of American citizenship, and Patrick Deneen’s critique of liberal democracy.

The Forum on Constitutionalism and Democracy at SUNY Geneseo was established in 2019 by Professors Carly Herold and Aaron Herold to establish programming, and to foster campus conversations, about civic education and liberal democracy. The Forum and this event are supported by a grant from the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History. This event is also co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science and International Relations.