Conversations   

John Locke wrote that people possess the rights of life, liberty, and property. Jefferson took that idea and changed a single word. In the Declaration of Independence, property became the pursuit of happiness, a deliberate shift meant to protect people from arbitrary domination, not guarantee personal success. Elizabeth Anderson applies that principle to the modern workplace. A boss who controls your speech, movement, and livelihood without accountability exercises the same kind of unchecked authority Jefferson opposed. Anderson isn’t putting words in his mouth; she’s carrying his argument to its logical conclusion.

Elizabeth Anderson, Ph.D., is a MacArthur Fellow, Fellow of the British Academy, and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. One of America’s leading public philosophers, she has spent four decades examining equality, democracy, workplace power, and the conditions necessary for human flourishing. Her work explores the enduring gap between America’s democratic ideals and lived reality.

James Madison famously observed, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” His point was not cynicism, but a clear-eyed understanding of power, human nature, and the institutions required to preserve a republic. Two hundred and fifty years later, democratic institutions face mounting pressures that the Founders anticipated and sought to constrain. This conversation examines whether the challenges confronting American democracy today reflect the very vulnerabilities Madison warned could threaten the survival of self-government.

Don Herzog, Ph.D., is the Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. A graduate of Cornell University and Harvard University, he has spent more than four decades studying the foundations of democratic government, political authority, and constitutional order. An award-winning teacher and distinguished scholar, Herzog is the author of influential works on sovereignty, legitimacy, and republican government. His scholarship explores the enduring challenges the Founders recognized in preserving democratic self-government.

Ben Green’s work sits at the intersection of technology, ethics, and democratic governance. As a scholar of government algorithms, he asks a deceptively simple question: when machines make decisions that affect people’s lives — in courtrooms, in city halls, in public institutions — who is actually in control? His research examines algorithmic fairness, the limits of human oversight, and what it means to regulate artificial intelligence in a democracy.

Ben Green, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information and the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Trained as an applied
mathematician, his research examines how algorithms and data-driven systems shape democratic institutions and public life. He is the author of The Smart Enough City, and his forthcoming MIT Press book, Algorithmic Realism, arrives this fall.