Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom 

Roger Berkowitz

Roger Berkowitz has been teaching political theory, legal thought, and human rights at Bard College since 2005. He is the academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.
Professor Berkowitz is an interdisciplinary scholar, teacher, and writer. His interests stretch from Greek and German philosophy to legal history and from the history of science to images of justice in film and literature. He is the author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition; coeditor of Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics; editor of Revenge and Justice, a special issue of Law, Culture, and the Humanities; and a contributing editor to Rechtsgeschichte. His essays have appeared in numerous academic journals. Roger Berkowitz received his B.A. from Amherst College; J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley; and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. 

Leon Botstein

President, Bard College. Chairman, Central European University. Board member Open Society Foundations. Music Director, American Symphony Orchestra 1992 to present. Artistic director, Summerscape and Bard Music Festivals. Music Director, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (2003 to 2010).

Hans Kern

Hans, an American German also from Munich, came to learn about sortition through Jonas and found that it in many ways satisfies his demand for more inclusive decision-making. Hans is a writer, illustrator and self-publisher of environmental manuals, including the [Re]cyclopaedia: global swarming toolbox of all the known strategies for [re]versing global warming and [re]pairing the planet. He believes deliberative sortition is the key to bringing ecologically prudent policy to the political sphere, from the local to the global scale. Hans graduated from Bard College in 2014. 

Darrah Cloud

Darrah Cloud’s new play, TURNING, premiered at Centenary Stage in March 2020. SABINA, a musical adaptation of Willy Holtzman’s play for which she wrote the lyrics, premiered at Portland Stage in May 2020. UNDERSTUDY JESUS received a workshop production at Rhinebeck Center for the Performing Arts in Fall 2018. OUR SUBURB premiered at Theater J in Washington, DC in 2014 and has gone on to numerous theatres. JOAN THE GIRL OF ARC toured with Cincinnati Playhouse, 2014. Other plays produced across the U.S. include WHAT’S BUGGING GREG?, THE STICK WIFE, THE MUD ANGEL, DREAM HOUSE, BRAILLE GARDEN, THE SIRENS, HEARTLAND, THE BOXCAR CHILDREN, HONOR SONG FOR CRAZY HORSE and the stage adaptation of Willa Cather’s O PIONEERS! which premiered at the Huntington Stage starring Mary McDonnell and was filmed by American Playhouse. Alum: New Dramatists, member: Honor Roll, Howl Playwrights (Co-director). Graduate of the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, professor at Goddard College, and Town Supervisor of Pine Plains.

Hollie Russon Gilman

Dr. Hollie Russon Gilman is a political scientist, lecturer, advisor and civic strategist on topics at the intersection of civic engagement, digital technology, and governance. She is particularly interested in re-vitalizing American democracy, local innovation, and the opportunities and challenges of digital technologies to enhance governance and public policy. She is a frequent writer, speaker, and contributor on these topics. Hollie Russon Gilman holds a PhD and MA from Harvard's Department of Government as well as an A.B. from the University of Chicago with highest honors in political science. Her first book Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in the United States was noted by Inc.com as a critical book deciding the future of our cities. Her new book Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Democratic Crisis (2019 with Sabeel Rahman, President of Demos, and published by Cambridge University Press, explores how can we empower traditionally marginalized communities and communities of color to have a greater voice and power in civic life and policy making. We examine new organizing models in grassroots communities as well as new governance innovations which leverage civic tech, human-centered design, and participatory governance innovation.  VIEW MORE >>

Jonas Kunz '18

After finishing his primary education at a Steiner School close to Munich, Germany, Jonas attended Bard College, where he took classes in Ancient Greek, Economics, Philosophy and Politics. Jonas first heard about sortition from his good friend Luke Harrington, who in turn had heard about it from another trusted friend. Searching for a more meaningful democratic process, he quickly recognised: sortition warrants deeper investigation. Upon finishing his thesis for his B.A. in Political Studies on sortition, Jonas invited Hans to co-found B.I.R.D.S. in the Spring of 2018. 

David Van Reybrouck

David Van Reybrouck is considered “one of the leading intellectuals in Europe” (Der Tagesspiegel) and is a pioneering advocate of participatory democracy. He founded the G1000 Citizens' Summit, and his work has led to trials in participatory democracy throughout Belgium and the Netherlands. He is also one of the most highly regarded literary and political writers of his generation; his most recent book, Congo: The Epic History of a People, won 19 prizes, sold 500,000 copies, and has been translated into a dozen languages. It was described as a “masterpiece” by the Independent and “magnificent” by the New York Times.

Jane Suiter 

Jane is a Professor in the School of Communications at Dublin City University. Jane's expertise lies mainly in the area of the public sphere; and in particular participation and political engagement. Her current research focus is on  citizens’ assemblies and on disinformation. She is co-PI on the Irish Citizen Assembly (2016-2018) (2019-2020) and the Irish Constitutional Convention (2012-2014) and a founder member of We the Citizens (2011), Ireland’s first deliberative experiment. She is a member of the Research Advisory Group on the Scottish Citizens’ Assembly. She has published in 30 plus journals including Representation, International Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, Politics and the International Journal of Communication and is the author of two books including Reimagining Democracy: Lessons in Deliberative Democracy from the Irish Frontline published by Cornell University Press.

Tracy B. Strong

Tracy B. Strong is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the University of Southampton (UK) and UCSD Distinguished Professor,emeritus.  He is the author  of many articles and several books, most recently Politics without Vision: ‘Thinking without a Banister’ in the Twentieth Century (Chicago) and ‘Learning our Native Tongue’: Citizenship, Contestation and Conflict in America (Chicago).  From 1990 until 2000, he was editor of Political Theory. An International Journal of Political Philosophy. He has recently been exploring and publishing on the political thought of the great writers of the XIXth century American Renaissance.

James Barry Jr.

James Barry Jr. is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University Southeast. He is of author of Measures of Science (Northwestern University Press) and Co-Editor of Merleau-Ponty: Texts and Dialogues (Humanities Press). He is editor of the journal Arendt Studies published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. He is co-founder and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Hannah Arendt Circle. His most recent articles include “The Growth of the Social Realm in Arendt’s Post-Mortem of the Modern Nation-State” and “The Risk of Total Divergence: Politicized Intelligence and Defactualization in the Age of Imminent War.” He is currently completing two book-length studies, one on the legacies of expropriation and the rise of the state of modern poverty at play in Arendt’s work and the other on the ways in which the loss of land- based communities sets the stage for our post-industrial consumeristic world.

Robert McKeon

Robert Mckeon is the Red Hook Town Supervisor. He came to Red Hook in 1998 after a successful career in real estate in Brooklyn. With his wife and three daughters, McKeon raises livestock on a 500-acre family farm. McKeon has performed volunteer work in the local agricultural community and helped develop farmland and open-space programs that have become models for other communities.

In 2003, he spearheaded a public referendum to purchase Development Rights on farms. The motion was approved by 83% of voters. To date, over 45 properties and 4,000 acres of preserved farmland join other types of open space easements in the Township. In 2007 he was named a Hudson Valley Hero by Scenic Hudson for efforts that also included the creation of a Community Preservation Fund.   VIEW MORE >>

Peter MacLeod

Peter MacLeod is the founder and principal of MASS LBP, and one of Canada’s leading experts in public engagement and deliberative democracy. Since its founding in 2007, MASS has completed more than 200 major policy projects for governments and public agencies across Canada while pioneering the use of Civic Lotteries and Citizen Reference Panels and earning international recognition for its work.
Peter frequently writes and speaks about the citizen’s experience of the state, the importance of public imagination, and the future of responsible government. 
A graduate of the University of Toronto and Queen’s University, he is the past chair of Toronto’s Wellesley Institute for Urban Health, and currently serves on the boards of Tides Canada, an environmental charity, as well as the Environics Institute and the YMCA of Greater Toronto. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Michael K. MacKenzie

Michael MacKenzie’s research interests include democratic theory, intergenerational relations, deliberation, political representation, institutional design, and public engagement. His book project, Future Publics: Democracy, Deliberation, and Future-Regarding Action, is about the challenges and possibilities of making long-term decisions in democratic systems. In that book, and elsewhere, he argues that randomly selected legislatures could help make our democratic systems more future-regarding. His forthcoming paper ‘Democratic Non-Participation,’ which is co-authored with Alfred Moore, explores forms of non-participation that may be justified on democratic grounds.       

Michael MacKenzie holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia (2013) and a Master’s degree in Political Science and Social Statistics from McGill University (2006). In 2006-07 he worked as a policy analyst and facilitator with the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. Since that time he has helped run several other randomly selected assemblies, both large and small. Before coming to the University of Pittsburgh he was a Democracy Fellow and post-doctoral researcher at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Hélène Landemore

Kali Akuno 

Kali Akuno is a co-founder and director of Cooperation Jackson, which is an emerging network of worker cooperatives and supporting institutions. Cooperation Jackson is fighting to create economic democracy by creating a vibrant solidarity economy in Jackson, MS that will help transform Mississippi and the South.  VIEW MORE >>