A Morse Bookmarks event featuring Neil O'Brian, assistant professor of political science at UO. 

In the late twentieth century, gay rights, immigration, gun control, and abortion debates all burst onto the political scene, scrambling the parties and polarizing the electorate. Neil A. O’Brian traces the origins of today’s political divide on these issues to the 1960s when Democrats and Republicans split over civil rights. It was this partisan polarization over race, he argues, that subsequently shaped partisan fault lines on other culture war issues that persist to this day.

Neil O’Brian is an academic expert in U.S. politics with focus on public opinion, political parties and polarization. In May 2024, he was named a 2024 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. 

Featuring Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. Sadhwani specializes in Asian American and Latino voting behavior, elections, interest groups and representation. Her analysis of politics and elections has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, Politico, The Guardian, Vox, The Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The HuffPost and many more. In a voting rights case before the California Supreme Court, she coauthored an amicus brief that summarizes empirical research on the benefits of maximizing the voting strength of historically excluded communities.

Election takeaways and discussion of what comes next with a panel of election experts featuring Rep. Peter DeFazio and University of Oregon professors Alison Gash, Chandler James, Regina Lawrence, Neil O’Brian and Daniel Tichenor. Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

Watch the livestream

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

Watch the livestream

2024 Margaret Hallock Lecture featuring Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO since 2014. Nelson represents 55,000 workers at 20 airlines. The New York Times called her "America's most powerful flight attendant" for her role in helping to end the 35-day government shutdown and InStyle Magazine placed her on their Top 50 Badass Women list. The New Yorker profiled AFA and Nelson's career in May 2022. 

Nelson has served as a leading voice on issues facing women in the workplace and across the country, encouraging women everywhere to "Join Unions, Run Unions." She serves as a member of the AFL-CIO executive council, the Communication Workers of America executive board, the Transportation Trades Department executive board, the Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and Trade Policy, and as vice chair of the International Transport Workers Federation Civil Aviation steering committee. She received the Jones-Blizzard Award from the United Mine Workers of America, the AFL-CIO MLK Drum Major for Justice Award, the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award from Jobs with Justice, the National Consumers League Trumpeter Award, Women’s March Spotlight Award, and Massachusetts Teachers Association Friend of Labor Award. Nelson grew up in Corvallis and earned a bachelor's degree from Principia College with majors in English and Education.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. 

Featuring Steve Levitsky. Levitsky is a professor of government and Latin American studies and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a senior democracy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of the bestselling How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.

Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, and The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World; a contributor for MSNBC; a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama; and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018. Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, the United Nations Association at the UO, and the School of Journalism and Communication.

Frances Moore Lappé is a social justice activist and the author of 20 books, including Diet for a Small Planet, which sold millions of copies and was named as one of 75 Books by Women Whose Words Have Changed the World by the Women's National Book Association. Her most recent works focus on “living democracy”—suggesting not only a government accountable to citizens but a way of living aligned with the deep human need for connection, meaning, and power. Among many awards, she has received the James Beard Humanitarian Award, the International Studies Association's 2009 Outstanding Public Scholar Award, the Nonino Prize in Italy for her life's work, and 20 honorary doctorates.

Chloe Thurston, Northwestern; and Emily Zackin, Johns Hopkins; will discuss their forthcoming book. The Political Development of American Debt Relief traces how geographic, sectoral, and racial politics shaped debtor activism over time, enhancing our understanding of state-building, constitutionalism, and social policy.

Will Jones, professor of history at the University of Minnesota, will deliver the Bob Bussel Labor History Lecture on April 24, 2025.

The UO Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) created the lecture in recognition of Bob Bussel’s years of service as LERC’s director and an affiliated member of the UO history department.  The lecture features historians with a distinguished record of scholarship, a commitment to public history, and an interest in labor and working-class issues.  Will Jones is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota with a particular interest in issues of race and class.  Professor Jones is the author of two books and numerous articles on labor and working-class history.  He is also a past president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association.

Danielle Allen, 2024-25 Wayne Morse Chair, is a political theorist, professor at Harvard University and an advocate for democracy. Her acclaimed book, Our Declaration, offers a profound analysis of American democratic principles. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Allen contributed crucial insights on equitable policy responses and effective governance. Allen recieved the Kluge Prize, which recognizes work in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prizes, in 2020. In 2022, she ran for Governor of Massachusetts, emphasizing the need for systemic reform and inclusivity in state government. She writes a column on constitutional democracy for the Washington Post.