Description:

Dialectics of Tyranny 

Join the Roberta Buffett Institute for a faculty research lunchtime talk series on the first Friday of every month. Faculty members give a half-hour talk intended for a broad, multidisciplinary audience of Northwestern students, faculty, and staff, followed by a conversational Q&A. Lunch is provided beginning at 12:15 p.m.

February's Buffett First Friday Lunch will feature Iza Ding, Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

We live in a moment of renewed fear about “tyranny,” “autocracy,” and “authoritarianism.” Books warning that liberal democracy is under siege, whether from Moscow, Beijing, or closer to home, fill the shelves. Yet much of this discourse still leans on a Cold War–era script: a virtuous, freedom-loving “us” threatened by a sinister, illiberal “them.” 

Professor Ding's talk will challenge that binary. Drawing on interviews with political elites in the United States, China, and Russia, she will argue that the way we imagine “authoritarianism” reveals as much about ourselves as about those we scrutinize—and sometimes demonize. Just as David Riesman once cautioned that American fantasies of “totalitarian power” reflected the anxieties of liberal society, today’s diagnoses of authoritarianism often project our own contradictions outward.

Instead of reinforcing caricatures, Ding will examine how authoritarian regimes perceive themselves, how they view the West, how the West perceives them—and itself—and how conflicts emerge from those mismatched understandings. Only by recognizing the psychological complexity of both “us” and “them” can we begin to imagine a world less trapped by fear, projection, and the allure of moral superiority.

Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated.