In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (Penguin, 2017), Duke University historian Nancy MacLean puts the assault on democracy from the radical right in a much longer historical timeline, tracing from the New Deal a story that implicates both corporate funders and academic institutions.

On February 16 from 6 to 7 p.m., MacLean will present “Democracy in Chains,” the second webinar in the “America, Race, and Democracy” series.

Laura Belmonte, dean of the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and Michael Moehler, founding director of the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, will serve as discussants.

MacLean serves as the William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. Her scholarship has received more than a dozen prizes and awards and been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowships Foundation.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. It also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Current Interest, the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award.

MacLean is the author of four other books, including Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994.

“Democracy in Chains” is part of “America, Race, and Democracy,” a Virginia Tech webinar series sponsored by the Office for Inclusion and Diversity, the Academy of Transdisciplinary Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and the Equity and Social Disparity in the Human Condition Destination Area.

In addition, Porchlight Book Company is offering Nancy MacLean’s award-winning book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America at a 35 percent discount to members of the Virginia Tech community; visit this link for more details.