The Bicentennial Symposium - Democracy: Past, Present, and Future

Join us for the Bicentennial Academic Symposium at Lafayette College

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10

 12-1 p.m. – Registration/kickoff lunch reception 

(Farinon Student Center, Marlo Room)

1-2:30 p.m. – Faculty Panel I: Lafayette College and Democracy: From the Archives

(Farinon Student Center, Marlo Room)

• Rachel Goshgarian (history) – “Lafayette in Persia and the Archive as Democratic Classroom”
• Chris Phillips (English and environmental studies) – “What Are We Doing Here?: Reflections on a 200-Year-Old Answer”
• Mathieu Smith-Perrot (language and literary studies) – “Seen From Both Shores: Lafayette College in the American and French Press”
• Elaine Stomber (Special Collections and College Archives) – “Civic Movements and Institutional Reform: A History of Student Activism From the Lafayette College Archives”

Related items from the archives can be found in the Simon Room in Skillman Library.

2:45-4:15 p.m. – Faculty Panel II: Democracy and Higher Ed

(Farinon Student Center, Marlo Room)

• Sarah Appelhans (engineering studies) – “‘No Innovation Without Representation’: How to Save the Soul of Engineering Education”
• Gabrielle Kelenyi (English) – “‘Strong People Don’t Need Strong Leaders’: Illuminating the Relationship Between Leadership, Expertise, and Writing”
• Abu Rizvi (economics) – “Colleges, Democracy, and Responsibility”
• Jenn Rossmann (mechanical engineering) – “Technological Citizenship” 

4:30-6:45 p.m. – Related exhibits and Student Panel

(Williams Center for the Arts and Skillman Library) 

• Student Panel (4:40-5:10pm): On Practice-Based Research: Encountering Humanities through 3D Modeling and Experiential Learning (Williams Center for the Arts, Room 108)
• The Spy Who Brought Surrender (Williams Center for the Arts, Williams Center Gallery)
• Engineering Artifacts: Past, Present, & Future (Williams Center for the Arts, Kirby Art Study Center)
• Adaptations of College Hill: A Bicentennial Exploration Through Rephotograpy (Skillman Library, Lobby)
• Lafayette 200: A Bicentennial History of Lafayette College(Skillman Library, Simon Room)
• We’ll Gather By the Twilight’s Glow: 200 Years of Community at Lafayette College (Skillman Library, Reference Area)
• This Incomparable Site: From College Edifice to College Hill (Skillman Library, Lass Gallery)
• And more! 

7-8:30 p.m. –  Hélène Landemore plenary address followed by reception and book signing (Colton Chapel)

“Politics Without Politicians: Democratic Renewal in an Age of Polarization and AI”

 Representative democracy is buckling under pressures its architects never anticipated: entrenched polarization, eroding institutional trust, and now the arrival of AI systems poised to reshape governance itself. This talk argues that the fragilities of our representative democracies are systemic and structural, not contingent, and make them unfit to handle the new challenges ahead. Drawing on the case for citizen rule developed in “Politics Without Politicians” (2026), Landemore will show how sortition-based assemblies that deliberate and legislate, paired with large-scale referenda on periodic programs and select controversial questions, offer a principled, scalable alternative to rule by professional politicians. Landemore then turns to a more urgent frontier: AI governance, where decisions with worldwide consequence are currently being made by a handful of corporate actors with no democratic mandate. Building on recent work proposing a global deliberative architecture for AI oversight, Landemore argues that the same logic that justifies citizen assemblies domestically demands a democratic answer at the global level, before that architecture is built by default, by those with the least incentive to include the rest of us.

Free copies of Professor Landemore's book will be available at the talk while supplies last and her keynote address will be followed by a reception and book signing.