Date: Thursday, October 16, 2025

Time: 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Location: Kerwin Hall, Room 301

Dark passions are a permanent part of the human condition. They can surface at unexpected times and be manipulated by demagogues. A prudent polity must acknowledge the existence of these passions and take measures to ensure that they don’t run amuck. Can we learn to do this before it is too late?

William A. Galston is a senior fellow and the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Prior to January 2006, he was the Saul Stern Professor and acting dean at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, founding director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and executive director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal, co-chaired by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and former Senator Sam Nunn. A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as deputy assistant to President Clinton for domestic policy. Galston is the author of nine books and hundreds of articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics. His most recent book is Anger, Fear, Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech. A winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert H. Humphrey Award, Galston was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. Galston has appeared on all the principal television networks and is frequently interviewed on NPR. He writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.