The 2024 U.S. presidential election is shaping up to be another pivotal contest that could significantly reshape the nation’s political landscape for years to come. This panel will examine the shifting demographic and political forces that are redefining the traditional bases of the Democratic and Republican parties and their efforts to build new electoral coalitions. Panelists will analyze voter trends and realignment along key dimensions, including gender, age, race and ethnicity, and explore how issues like the economy, abortion, immigration, and threats to democracy are motivating different segments of the electorate.
To be held on Friday, October 25, 2024 from 12:00pm-1:30pm, this panel will feature Ian Haney López, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at UC Berkeley; David Hollinger, the Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus of History at UC Berkeley; and Omar Wasow, Assistant Professor in Department of Political Science. Moderated by G. Cristina Mora, Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies (by courtesy), and Co-Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.
Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Travers Department of Political Science, the Institute of Governmental Studies, and the Center for Right-Wing Studies.
Matrix on Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today’s most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. These thought-provoking events are free and open to the public.
Panelists
Ian Haney López is Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at UC Berkeley. His focus for the last decade has been on the use of racism as a class weapon in electoral politics, and how to respond. In Dog Whistle Politics (2014), he detailed the fifty-year history of coded racism in American politics. Ian has since actively promoted the idea of a race-class fusion as the basis for a multi-racial progressive majority. He co-chaired the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice, along with Dorian Warren and Ana Avendaño, and founded the Race-Class Narrative Project, along with Anat Shenker-Osorio and Heather McGhee. In his latest book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (2019), Ian explains Trump’s complex relationship with dog whistling and further develops the race-class response.
David Hollinger is Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus of History at UC Berkeley. His work has broadly focused on religion in American society and American intellectual history, and he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His books include Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular (2022), When this Mask of Flesh is Broken: The Story of an American Protestant Family (2019), and Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (2017).
Omar Wasow is an Assistant Professor in Department of Political Science. His research focuses on race, politics and statistical methods. His paper on the political consequences of the 1960s civil rights movement was published in the American Political Science Review. His co-authored work on estimating causal effects of race was published in the Annual Review of Political Science. Before joining the academy, Omar was the co-founder of BlackPlanet.com. Under his leadership, BlackPlanet.com became the leading site for African Americans, reaching over three million active users a month. Omar also worked to demystify technology issues through regular TV and radio segments on programs like NBC’s Today Show, CNN’s American Morning and public radio’s Tavis Smiley show. Similarly, Omar tutored Oprah Winfrey in her first exploration of the Net in the 12-part series ‘Oprah Goes Online’.
G. Cristina Mora (moderator) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies (by courtesy) and the Co-Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses mainly on questions of census racial classification, immigration, and racial politics in the United States and Europe. Her book, Making Hispanics, was published by the University of Chicago Press and provides the first historical account of the rise of the “Hispanic/Latino” panethnic category in the United States. She is currently working on two new book projects funded by the Russell Sage Foundation. The first, California Color Lines: Racial Politics in an Era of Economic Precarity (w. T. Paschel) examines the contradictions of racial politics in nation’s most diverse and seemingly progressive state. The second, Race and the Politics of Trust in an Age of Government Cynicism (w. J. Dowling and M. Rodriguez-Muniz) provides the first mixed methods examination of race and political trust in the U.S.