The Spring 2026 Mitchell Lecture
The Protestant Work Ethic and the Roots of Populist Authoritarianism
Friday, February 27, 2026
Lecture at 2:30 p.m.
Panel discussion at 3:30 p.m.
Reception to follow.
Charles B. Sears Law Library
John Lord O'Brian Hall
University at Buffalo, North Campus
Free and open to the public.
The 2025-26 MITCHELL LECTURE COMMITTEE
Prof. Paul Linden-Retek (Chair)
Prof. Michael Boucai
Prof. Alexandra Harrington
Prof. David Westbrook
Lisa Mueller
Daniel Ortega
Brandon Tubinis
Our Mitchell Speaker
Elizabeth Anderson
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor
and John Dewey Distinguished
University Professor of Philosophy
and Women's and Gender Studies
Professor of Law
University of Michigan
Professor Anderson specializes in moral, social and political philosophy, feminist theory, social epistemology, and the philosophy of economics and the social sciences. A former student of John Rawls—whose work helped shape modern political philosophy—Anderson is the recipient of both the Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Foundation’s prestigious “genius grant.” Her exceptional career has also been profiled in The New Yorker.
Her research explores the interactions of social science with moral and political theory, how we learn to improve our value judgments, the epistemic functions of emotions and democratic deliberation, and issues of race, gender, and equality.
She is the author of The Imperative of Integration; Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don't Talk About It); and, most recently, Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back.
About the Spring 2026 Mitchell Lecture
The U.S. today faces what is widely viewed as a crisis of democratic backsliding spurred by a right-wing populist political movement. Common ways of understanding why this is happening fail to answer some critical questions. How can right-wing populist leaders claim to be in favor of the working class, yet retain the latter's support even when they support policies favoring plutocrats and undermine institutions designed to empower workers? Why are the richest leaders of U.S. technology companies, famous for their secular libertarianism, politically aligned with Christian nationalists who want to impose their socially conservative views on others? Why are they increasingly attracted to authoritarian politics, even though this means they must subordinate themselves to the arbitrary rule of the President?
Anderson argues that the answers to these questions become clear once we recognize right-wing populist politics as rooted in an authoritarian version of the Protestant work ethic and grasp the social psychology of submission in authoritarian regimes.
Justice Robert H. Jackson delivering the first Mitchell Lecture in 1951.
About the Mitchell Lecture
The Mitchell Lecture Series was endowed in 1950 by a gift from Lavinia A. Mitchell, in memory of her husband, James McCormick Mitchell. An 1897 graduate of the Buffalo Law School, Mitchell later served as chairman of the Council of the University of Buffalo, which was then a private university.
Justice Robert H. Jackson delivered the first Mitchell Lecture in 1951, titled "Wartime Security and Liberty Under Law." The lecture was published that year in the first issue of the Buffalo Law Review.
Mitchell Lecture programs have brought many distinguished speakers to the University at Buffalo School of Law, including Derrick Bell, Paul Freund, Lawrence Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Sheila Jasanoff, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Llewellyn, Stuart Macaulay, Catharine MacKinnon, and Richard Posner.