Democracy and the Struggle for the Right to Vote

Ari Berman is an award-winning journalist, a senior voting rights reporter for Mother Jones, a fellow at Type Media Center, and the author of GIVE US THE BALLOT: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction). He was the first national reporter to cover voter suppression during the 2012 election. His coverage earned widespread acclaim and pushed this critical issue into the national spotlight.

His stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Nation, Politico and The Guardian. He is a frequent guest and political commentator on MSNBC, NPR, PBS and C-Span, and appears in the documentary films All In: The Fight for Democracy and Slay the Dragon.

Ari is the winner of the 2022 Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism from the Sidney Hillman Foundation which recognized him as “the nation’s preeminent voting rights journalist.” His work has also earned him an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media, and a place on the FD200 – a list of 200 awardees whose work embodies Frederick Douglass’s enduring legacy of social change.

GIVE US THE BALLOT was named a best book of 2015 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, NPR and Kirkus Reviews, and was nominated for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Ari is also the author of HERDING DONKEYS: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, and the forthcoming MINORITY RULE – about efforts by white conservatives to entrench power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift.

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Dr. Khalilah L. Brown-Dean is an Award-Winning Scholar, Educator, and Author. Her scholarship centers the importance of identity in shaping access to democracy with a particular emphasis on voting rights, civic engagement, and punishment. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University (2003) and a Bachelor of Arts in Government from The University of Virginia (1998). She is Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Political Science at Quinnipiac University. In 2021 she was recognized as a Spotlight Recipient by the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame.

Dr. Brown-Dean’s scholarship appears in numerous scholarly publications and popular outlets. Her book Identity Politics in the United States traces the confluence of public policy, law, and institutional design in structuring political divisions. Her newest book project, Protesting Vulnerability: Race and Pandemic Politics, is under contract with Cambridge University Press and co-authored with Professor Ray Block Jr. of Penn State University. She is co-author of a Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies report on the contemporary status of voting rights in the United States that was presented during the 50th Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday March in Selma, Alabama.

Brown-Dean is a highly sought-after political analyst and commentator whose work appears in over 400 major media outlets. She hosts the radio show and podcast, Disrupted, for Connecticut Public Radio and is featured in the documentaries, “The Color of Justice” and “Extinction.” Diverse Magazine named her one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Higher Education.