How and whether constitutional democracies can balance challenges to public safety and their commitment to individual rights is the topic of a presentation this month by political scientist Ira Katznelson at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The event titled “Fear and Democracy: Reflections on Security and Freedom,” will occur on Thursday, April 27, from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in the Old Main Chapel on the CU Boulder campus.

Katznelson is an Americanist whose work has straddled comparative politics and political theory as well as political and social history. He is the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University.

His most recent books are Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (with Andreas Kalyvas), and When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America.

Katznelson is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is president of the Social Science Research Council and past president of the American Political Science Association.

The event, which is free and open to the public is sponsored by the CU Boulder Center for Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) and the American Politics Research Lab.