Francis Fukuyama, "Identity"

Francis Fukuyama discusses his book, "Identity", at Politics and Prose on 9/19/18.

Fukuyama’s 2014 Political Order and Political Decay argued that America was splintering into a nation of contentious interest groups. In his new book he argues that this divisiveness, which has now taken a turn into populist nationalism, comes not from economic inequality, as is often assumed, but from identity politics. He shows how demands for recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, and gender have shattered the unity the nation was built on. While acknowledging that identity must be recognized, Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, warns that we need to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has previously taught at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. He was a researcher at the RAND Corporation and served as the deputy director in the State Department's policy planning staff. He is the author of The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, and America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. He lives with his wife in California.

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Produced by Tom Warren