Democracy Day Panel: Faculty and Organizers Discuss Connections Between Electoral Justice and Authoritarian Threats in the US and Overseas
Attendees heard about the impacts of successful student and alumni/ae civic engagement projects and took in commentary on current challenges to democratic practice, ranging from the struggle for student voter access to the systemic silencing of marginalized voices and attempts by government to hollow out important institutions. The panelists noted that they were expressing their personal views and not those of their institutions.
Erin Cannan, Vice President for Civic Engagement at Bard, moderated the panel of organizers and faculty, while Bard alumni inspired first-years with their community leadership stories, including Zarlasht Sarmast, who sponsors educational opportunities for hundreds of women in Afghanistan; Mariel Fiori, editor-in-chief of La Voz, the only Spanish language magazine in the Mid-Hudson Valley, serving 100,000+ readers; and Dariel Vasquez, who launched Brothers@, originally Brothers@Bard, a national mentor program focused on Black male achievement
Sierra Ford ‘26, lead student intern at Election@Bard, opened the discussion highlighting obstacles that youth organizers and voters face, noting that US youth voter turnout in 2022 was “abysmally low” at 23%. Panelists then explored challenges to democracy in the United States and what lessons could be learned from the rise and fight against authoritarianism across the globe.
Power at the Polls
Brianna Cea, Executive Director of GenVote, a nonprofit youth-led movement that fights for young people’s right to vote, spoke to her own experience as a student at SUNY Binghamton, where she experienced firsthand the impact of New York’s archaic voter registration rules during the 2016 presidential election. At the polls, she was disappointed to find that she was not on the voter rolls and therefore could not vote. GenVote now seeks to rectify such obstacles by providing a “political home for direct action and campaigns that prioritize electoral justice,” said Cea.
Cea cited a Brennan Center Voting Rights Round-up that reports restrictive voting laws were being enacted in 27 states this fall, in an attempt to dissuade youth and student voters from casting a ballot. “They are doing this because they know that our generation, when we actually unleash our political power at the polls and elsewhere, we win…They understand democracy matters and they are trying to rig the system.”
Echoing Cea, Jonathan Becker, Executive Vice President of Bard College and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement, said that “Bard students had systematically been deprived of the right to vote.” Becker explained that Bard students and faculty began the fight for the right to vote locally more than 25 years ago. Since 2014, the hard work done by undergraduate students from Election@Bard and the Center for Civic Engagement led to Bard College finally securing a permanent campus polling site in 2022, he said.
Other Issues Beyond Voting
Becker underlined how voting is but one element of democracy and how Bard’s work around the globe demonstrates how a growing cohort of empowered authoritarian leaders, be it in places like Russia or Hungary, who attack institutions that help protect and preserve democracy, use the same form of authoritarian playbook. Their actions include not just undermining elections, but also eroding checks and balances, eroding institutions such as courts, nonprofits, and universities, quashing dissent, and scapegoating marginalized communities. He noted the United States is faced with many of these same threats.
Elmira Bayrasli, Director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program in New York City, offered a historical perspective on the US model of democracy, which she said has become increasingly undermined by neoliberalism. Since the 1990s, an over-emphasis on growth economies and privatization led to profoundly anti-democratic policies, she said. “Instead of democracy, what we were really pushing was capitalism and free markets…at the expense of civil liberties and human rights,” said Bayrasli.
Bayrasli said that in the current climate, “We are having very performative conversations about how to get back to democracy” with many discussions about voting but not enough about unfair economic policies. To truly support democracy, citizens must work to address the “disproportionate burden left for the middle and lower classes.”
Assaults on Higher Education
Maria Sachiko Cecire, founding director of Bard’s Center for Experimental Humanities, explained that her work as a Higher Learning Program Officer at the Mellon Foundation, where she focuses on the humanities, higher education, and social justice, allows her to “support more complete and accurate narratives of the human experience” and seeks to contribute to “a society that honors everyone,” she said.
Cecire said that more than 127 proposed legislative gag orders on higher education across the US (23 passed) are restricting freedom to learn and teach, a critical threat to democracy. She said the current pitched battles against ethnic, gender, and sexuality studies and against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives dangerously restrict whose stories are being told and who has access to higher education. Learning about these struggles and speaking out about them in public makes a difference, she said.
In a follow up Q&A, one student asked about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Becker pointed out that the initiative is an example of authoritarian policymaking and that the Heritage Foundation is linked with the Danube Institute in Hungary, from which many of the same conservative ideas have emerged. This is part of a broader systemic assault on institutions, including colleges and universities, said Becker. As an example, he cited New College of Florida, which has been under attack by state authorities for a year and a half, and where, recently hundreds of books on race, gender, and religion had literally been thrown out, illustrating Cecire’s earlier point about institutional threats. Additionally, said Becker, New College of Florida trustee Chris Rufo, who had studied so-called illiberal democracy in Hungary last spring, celebrated the destruction of the books.
Continued Engagement in the Democratic Process
A faculty member asked a question about voting in light of the war in Gaza, Israel’s repeated violations of international humanitarian law, and the failure of the US to curb such actions. Bayrasli suggested that reengaging with campaign finance reform was one way to tackle this issue. Cea cited the Uncommitted movement as one way voters could apply pressure to influence US elections and thereby policy in Israel/Palestine. She also noted that there are many issues critical to young people on the ballot and a range of elected offices that are a part of the election. Becker spoke about Bard’s deep commitment to education at Al Quds Bard College in Palestine but also noted “there is still an election and choices are being made.” He encouraged students to continue to engage in the democratic process as a means of representing their communities on this and other issues.
Post Date: 10-25-2024