During Fall 2025, the Clough Center organized a variety of events, featuring book talks and panel discussions aimed at advancing Democratic Resilience. These events convened students and scholars who participated in engaging conversations on constitutional democracy in the US and across the world.
On September 4, 2025, the Clough Center initiated our 2025-’26 programming with What the Constitution Means to Us. This event featured Shannon Bream, Fox News chief legal correspondent and host of Fox News Sunday. Drawing upon her extensive experience as a journalist, Bream delivered a speech on the US Constitution’s history and shared her thoughts on the Constitution’s endurance over time.
On October 9, 2025, the Center’s Fall Colloquium featured expert panels on “Democratic Resilience.” Topics included elections in the US, populism in Eastern Europe, and the pro-democracy movement in South Korea. Robert C. Bartlett (Political Science, Boston College), Sheri Berman (Political Science, Columbia University), Ingu Hwang (International Studies, Boston College), and Gerald Easter (Political Science, Boston College) served as the panelists.
The Clough Center hosted The Quest for Democracy in North Africa on November 6, 2025. Youssef Chahed and Mohammed Hashas explored the democratic trajectories in Morocco and Tunisia over the past decades. Youssef Chahed served as the Prime Minister of Tunisia from 2016 to 2020. During his tenure, Prime Minister Chahed took actions against terrorism and worked for racial and gender equality. Chahed is also a Visiting Fellow at the Clough Center. Hashas is a preeminent scholar of Moroccan intellectual history, religion, and politics in the Arab-European Islamic world at large. He is the editor of Contemporary Moroccan Thought (2025), a groundbreaking volume that reflects modern Morocco’s intellectual history.
Finally, the Clough Center featured Jill Lepore on December 3, 2025. Professor Lepore delivered a talk about her newly published book, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution (Livernight Publishing, 2025). Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. The event concluded with a thought-provoking discussion of constitutional democracy.
The Clough Center looks forward to continuing its consideration of “Democratic Resilience” in Spring 2026 with events such as Constructing the Constitutional Imagination: A Symposium in Honor of Ken I. Kersch (February 20, 2026) and our annual Spring Symposium (March 19-20, 2026). Also, on March 18, 2026, the Clough Center will co-sponsor Politics and Governance in the Digital Era: Between Populism and Technocracy.
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