TRUMP IS A SYMPTOM
America likes to tell itself that Donald Trump is an aberration: a ‘glitch in the system’, a ‘temporary rupture’ in an otherwise stable, democratic story. But what if Trump is not the disease, only the symptom of a cause requiring a deeper diagnosis?
Beneath the spectacle lies something more profound: a nation shaped by inequality, racial division, media collapse, elite failure, imperial power and a growing loss of faith in liberal institutions. Trump did not invent these forces. He weaponised them. Even now, American politics continues to orbit the conditions that made him possible.
This panel brings together some of the sharpest and most provocative voices in public life to argue over the crisis beneath the headlines. Is America confronting democratic decline or simply revealing what it has always been? Can liberalism survive the age of algorithmic rage and institutional distrust? And what happens when a superpower loses belief in itself?
This session is made possible with the support of UNSW Resilient Democracy Lab and Rob Keldoulis.
Peter Beinart [USA]
Peter Beinart is Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. His fourth book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, which was published by Knopf in 2025, won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. He is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, an MSNOW political commentator and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter on Substack.
Glenn Loury [USA]
Glenn C. Loury is Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Brown University. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association and a Member of the American Philosophical Society. He has published scholarly and public intellectual articles on racial inequality in the US. His most recent book, Self-Censorship (2025), expands upon his ideas on political correctness from the 1990s. He is the host of The Glenn Show, a widely viewed podcast, and has also written an acclaimed memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative.
Maria Ressa [PHI]
Maria Ressa is the co-founder and CEO of Rappler, the Philippines’ leading digital news site, and a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate recognised for her efforts to safeguard freedom of expression. She serves as Co-Chair of the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and Vice-Chair of the UN Internet Governance Forum. A Professor of Practice at Columbia University’s SIPA, she leads the Technology & Democracy Initiative. Her most recent book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Nick Bryant
During a distinguished career with the BBC, Nick Bryant came to be regarded as one of its finest foreign correspondents, covering September 11, the war in Afghanistan, the Asian tsunami, the election of Barack Obama and the presidency of Donald Trump. He has written for The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Economist, The New Statesman, The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald. He is the author of When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present and The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself. He is the presenter of Saturday Extra on ABC Radio National and authors the Substack, History Never Ended.
Rosalind Dixon
Rosalind Dixon is Anthony Mason Professor and Scientia Professor of Law at UNSW Sydney. She is Co-Director of the UNSW Gender Equality Hub, UNSW Resilient Democracy Lab and Pathways to Politics Program for Women NSW and a globally renowned expert on constitutional law and democracy.
We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country on which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
The views and opinions expressed by the Festival participants are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.