Author Talk: Julia Angwin & Ami Fields-Meyer — On Courage - with Miles Taylor

Watch authors Julia Angwin & Ami Fields-Meyer discuss " On Courage" at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and a former White House senior advisor, a deeply reported manual about how anyone can defy an authoritarian – based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.

The United States is only the latest country to face a leader who wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, disappears people off the street, and undermines free and fair elections. Today nearly three out of four people on earth live under authoritarianism, the highest rate since the late 1970s.

But even under repressive conditions, each of us holds the power to help defeat autocrats. Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?,” veteran reporter Julia Angwin and political strategist Ami Fields-Meyer give us a captivating – and profoundly hopeful – guide to courage in an age of fear.

Julia Angwin is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and monthly contributing writer for New York Times Opinion. In 2018, she founded The Markup, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that produces meaningful data-centered journalism about technology and the people affected by it. Before founding The Markup, she led investigative teams at ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal that pioneered the coverage of privacy and algorithmic accountability. She is a winner and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

Ami Fields-Meyer is a political strategist, speechwriter, and former White House senior policy advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. He is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and has served as a top advisor to political candidates, leaders of major civil rights groups, and high-profile public officials from Los Angeles City Hall to the West Wing.

Angwin and Fields-Meyer are in conversation with Miles Taylor. What does it cost to tell the truth — and is it worth it? Miles Taylor answered that question the hard way. As Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, he became one of the most prominent officials in American history to blow the whistle on a sitting president, publishing an anonymous New York Times essay that triggered a national reckoning. When he revealed his identity, he lost everything. He'd do it again. Miles has spent his career inside the haunted halls of power — the White House, the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, major U.S. tech companies, and beyond — and emerged with an uncommon vantage point on the threats to free society.

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