Mitchell Lecture to address populist alliances in an authoritarian era
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
The United States, many argue, is facing a crisis of democratic backsliding driven 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?
On Friday, February 27, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., the School of Law will welcome philosopher and professor, Elizabeth Anderson, who will address these questions at the Spring 2026 James McCormick Mitchell Lecture. The lecture, titled “The Protestant Work Ethic and the Roots of Populist Authoritarianism,” will take place in the Charles B. Sears Law Library in O’Brian Hall on UB’s North Campus. The one-hour presentation will be followed by a panel discussion at 3:30 p.m. featuring UB School of Law faculty members.
Anderson will provide an explanation for why these unlikely alliances make sense when viewed through an authoritarian reinterpretation of the Protestant work ethic and the psychology of submission that characterizes authoritarian systems.
EVENT DETAILS
Friday, February 27, 2026
Lecture: 2:30 p.m.
Panel Discussion: 3:30 p.m.
Reception to follow.
Charles B. Sears Law Library, O'Brian Hall
University at Buffalo
North Campus
Free and open to the public.
“Elizabeth Anderson is a renowned philosopher who speaks profoundly, yet accessibly and with great urgency to the essential questions of our time,” says Paul Linden‑Retek, associate professor of law and chair of the Mitchell Lecture Committee. “She recenters for us in our spring Mitchell Lecture the tensions at the heart of right‑wing populist authoritarianism, which sees a curious marriage of techno‑plutocrats, charismatic politicians appealing to the working class, and religious nationalists. In illuminating a coherent logic underlying these seeming contradictions, Professor Anderson offers us an expansive and useful understanding of how our politics have come to be as they are and why our crisis of democracy is as unyielding as it is.”
Anderson is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. A leading scholar of moral, social, and political philosophy, she also works in feminist theory, social epistemology, and the philosophy of economics and the social sciences. A former student of John Rawls, Anderson has received both a Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grant,” and her career has been profiled in The New Yorker.
The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception. Registration is required.
Established in 1950 through a gift from Lavinia A. Mitchell in memory of her husband, James McCormick Mitchell, an 1897 graduate of the law school, the Mitchell Lecture Series has brought many distinguished scholars to UB, including Derrick Bell, Devon Carbado, Paul Freund, Lawrence Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Sheila Jasanoff, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Llewellyn, Stuart Macaulay, Catharine MacKinnon, and Richard Posner.