The Center for Revitalizing American Institutions (RAI) hosts Campus & Country: Trust, Democracy, and Higher Education with Brandice Canes-Wrone, Larry Diamond, Paul Brest, and Brian Coyne on November 4, 2025, from 11:00a.m.-12:00 p.m. PT.
Higher education plays a vital role in sustaining a healthy democratic culture. Yet, over the past decade, public confidence in colleges and universities has declined sharply. At the same time, many institutions have retreated from their role in cultivating democratic citizens, placing greater emphasis on career preparation. What explains this erosion of trust? And how can higher education reclaim its civic mission? This panel will explore the causes of declining public confidence, the consequences for democracy, and potential pathways for renewing higher education’s civic purpose.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Brandice Canes-Wrone is the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, professor of political science at Stanford University, and the founding director of the Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He is also a Bass University fellow and teaches political science and sociology courses on democracy. At Hoover, he coleads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific and contributes to the Program on the US, China, and the World. At FSI, he is a core faculty member at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, leads the Israel Studies Program, coleads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, and cofounded the Journal of Democracy.
Edward B. Foley is the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University and directs its election law program. A nationally recognized expert on election law, he served as an on-air analyst for NBC and MSNBC during the 2020 and 2024 elections. His writing on democracy and electoral reform appears in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, and his Substack, Common Ground Democracy. His books include Ballot Battles and Presidential Elections and Majority Rule. Foley was a former US Supreme Court law clerk and Ohio solicitor general, a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2024–25 Crane Fellow at Princeton.
Richard H. Pildes is one of the country’s leading experts on legal issues concerning the democratic process and the structure of American government. He was a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court and served on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute and received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and Carnegie Scholar. He is coauthor of the casebook The Law of Democracy and has written on election reform, voting rights, effective government, presidential powers, and comparative perspectives on democracy.
