This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy and Susan McWilliams Barndt discuss the oft-overlooked idea of fraternity in America.
This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy is joined by Pomona College political theorist Susan McWilliams Barndt to discuss the shockingly under-emphasized concept of fraternity in America.
Susan is a professor of politics at Pomona College, where she has won the Wig Award for Excellence in Teaching four times. She also holds prominent leadership positions in the American Political Science Association, and is the author, editor, and coeditor of multiple books. Her writing has appeared in both scholarly and popular journals, and she is a regular media commentator on American politics
Jeremy and Susan’s conversation builds on the idea that Americans’ understanding of “community” is insufficient, and that the idea of “fraternity” more fully captures our communal experience. This conversation is in part inspired by the publication of the 50th anniversary edition of The Idea of Fraternity in America, by Susan's father, Wilson Carey McWilliams. We’ve lost sight of the idea of fraternity—and with it we’ve lost a great deal of the sense of communal identity on which America was founded and built. Now, we tend to focus on the “what” of our goings-on and ignore the “with whom.” Jeremy and Susan unpack the downsides of this, and what we can gain by thinking more about whom we spend our time with and how we can refresh fraternity.
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