We live at a unique time in modern history. Democracy is in retreat around the world, and authoritarian leaders are on the rise. There is an urgent need to understand what is happening – and also to find hope for a way forward.

Please join us on April 29 for the second lecture in the Democracy in Peril speaker series featuring Jason Stanley.

The Democracy in Peril speakers’ series – organized by the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba, in partnership with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights – will bring a number of the world’s leading thinkers on authoritarianism to Winnipeg where they will each give a free public lecture at the Museum.

In his urgent and timely presentation, Preserving Canadian Democracy, philosopher and bestselling author Jason Stanley examines the specific pressures facing Canadian democracy at this moment and what citizens, institutions, and communities can do to defend it. Drawing on decades of scholarship on authoritarianism, propaganda, and the erosion of democratic norms, Stanley brings both intellectual rigour and moral clarity to a question that could not be more pressing: how do we protect what we value when the forces working against it are so close to home?

Following his keynote, Stanley will join moderator Neil McArthur Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba for a conversation exploring themes of his presentation. A number of Stanley’s books will also be for sale that evening.

Formerly a Professor of Philosophy at Yale before leaving the US in 2024, Jason Stanley is now the Bissell‐Heyd Chair in American studies in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The descendant of Holocaust survivors and a leading expert of authoritarianism, Jason has dedicated his life’s work to studying the ideologies and structures that enable and conceal injustice. His essential bestseller, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics and their enduring prevalence in society today. His most recent book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, covers authoritarian attacks on education worldwide and the university’s role in protecting democracy.