Symposium on the Past and Future of American Democracy at the Webb Deane Stevens Museum
Common Ground in a Fractured Nation: A Symposium on the Past and Future of American Democracy
Webb Deane Stevens Museum • 211 Main St, Wethersfield, CT 06109
November 2, 2024
Tickets are on sale now, click here to purchase
Common Ground in a Fractured Nation: A Symposium on the Past and Future of American Democracy
Common Ground in a Fractured Nation brings the history we steward at the Webb Deane Stevens Museum into dialogue with modern anxieties about free speech, political violence, disinformation, and partisan gridlock. By focusing on how we go about looking at people and communities in the past, we hope to create new tools for understanding the present and ideas for how to move forward into the future.
Our nation and individual communities have been fractured many times before, including the mass panic of the mid-1600s that saw neighbors and family members accused and executed for witchcraft in Connecticut Colony. Dr. Walter Woodward (CT State Historian Emeritus) will look at the motives behind the witch trials and the environment that led to them. Dr. Susan Holly (Senior Historian, U.S. Department of State) will delve into the downfall of Silas Deane, America’s first foreign diplomat, who facilitated French support for the American Revolution and recruited officers like Lafayette. Falsely accused of malfeasance and deprived of a proper hearing in Congress because of partisan dysfunction, he took his case to the press and lost control of it, becoming perhaps the first American to get “cancelled.” The Department of State continued to suppress his reputation for more than a century, but that brief window of public discourse played a critical, if accidental, role in shaping how government in the United States would work.
Dr. Andrew Forsyth (Associate Dean, Chief of Staff, and Lecturer, Yale College) will offer perspective on campus culture and free speech at a university that has fared better than some in recent times. His own course offerings in Religious Studies include topics on the ethics of forgiveness and the interplay between tradition and modernity. Meanwhile, Benjamin Wagner (former Managing Editor, Facebook, and Senior VP, MTV News; maker of PBS documentary Mister Rogers & Me) will connect policy questions around journalistic bias, moderating free speech, and tech phenomena (such as “trending” news) with the role that intergenerational trauma, chronic stress, and toxic workplaces play in how people relate to one another—which is the topic of his new film, Friends & Neighbors. He’ll lead an audience exercise in discovering the effects of stress on our individual and collective sense of perspective, and perhaps on the way American democracy functions.
Following the individual presentations, WDS Museum Executive Director Brenton Grom will moderate a roundtable discussion with all four panelists, incorporating the audience into this important conversation.
Tickets:
$45 non-members
$40 members
$15 students, teachers, and museum professionals
$75 benefactors
A boxed lunch is included with each ticket.
Reduced ticket rates are available for anyone experiencing financial hardship.
Panelists
Dr. Walter Woodward, Connecticut State Historian Emeritus. In addition to his title as State Historian Emeritus, Dr. Woodward is an Associate Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut. He teaches American Environmental History, Public History, and an honors American Studies course focused on the Connecticut River, as well as courses in Connecticut history. He is the author of Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy and the Creation of New England Culture, numerous articles on New England history, and is a regular columnist for Connecticut Explored magazine. Dr. Woodward also serves on the Webb Deane Stevens Museum’s advisory council and is a former hit country music songwriter and performer. Hiis knowledge, sense of humor, and richly illustrated PowerPoint presentations have made him one of New England’s most sought-after public lecturers.
Dr. Susan Holly, Senior Historian, U.S. Department of State. Working within the Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State, Dr. Holly has been researching the origins of early American diplomacy for a new documentary compilation scheduled for release in 2026. She previously served as executive producer for a DVD and curriculum series on various topics in diplomacy for high school audiences, wrote a short history of U.S.-China relations and other materials for the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing, compiled volumes on Global Issues and a retrospective history on the Eisenhower era coup in Guatemala for the Foreign Relations of the United States. Before joining the office, she served in the Bureau of Public Affairs as an editor, speechwriter, and Department spokesperson for several international delegations. Dr. Holly earned degrees in history and journalism from Marquette University, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. Other publications include a book on the Iran-Iraq War for Lloyd’s of London Press, as well as numerous newspaper articles.
Dr. Andrew Forsyth, Associate Dean, Chief of Staff and Lecturer, Yale College. Dr. Forsyth received his Ph.D. from Yale’s Department of Religious Studies in 2017, having previously studied in Scotland and at Harvard and Cambridge. His book Common Law and Natural Law in America: From the Puritans to the Legal Realists (Cambridge University Press, 2019) was a joint winner of Heidelberg University’s Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award. His courses in Yale College include “Tradition and Modernity—Ethics, Religion, Politics, Law, & Culture”; “Ethics of Forgiveness;” and “Law, Morality, and Religion.”
Benjamin Wagner, fmr. Managing Editor, Facebook; fmr. Senior VP, MTV News. As Facebook’s first-ever Managing Editor, former MTV News SVP Benjamin Wagner led editorial teams across a suite of products that included Paper, Events, and Trending. When an anonymous contractor accused his former colleagues of anti-conservative bias—claims that played into the conservative narrative of liberal bias in the mainstream media—politicians launched an inquiry into the matter. Within a year, the platform was embroiled in controversy around Russian election interference, misinformation, disintermediation, distrust, and declining publisher revenue. As Global Programs Lead, Wagner helped launch the Facebook Journalism Project to foster trust with new publishers around the world. He spent four years leading programs in Sydney, Singapore, Jakarta, Manilla, Amsterdam, Brussels, and well beyond. When diagnosed in 2021 with post-traumatic stress caused by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and amplified by twenty-five years of chronic stress, he recognized the impact of trauma and stress in the growth of antidepressant use and binge drinking, a mental health crisis so urgent that it prompted a national hotline, isolation, and polarization. He decided—as Fred Rogers, the subject of his PBS documentary, Mister Rogers & Me, always encouraged him—to “look for the helpers.” In his new film, Friends & Neighbors, Wagner explores the impact of intergenerational trauma, ACEs, and toxic workplaces on our nervous systems, our ability to self-regulate, and our wellness.
Brenton Grom (moderator), Executive Director, Webb Deane Stevens Museum. Brenton Grom was appointed Executive Director of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum in Old Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 2023. From 2018 to 2023, he served the Delaware Historical Society as Director of the George Read II House & Gardens in Old New Castle, where he initiated an overhaul of its strategy and branding and developed a master plan for the grounds with acclaimed landscaped architect David Rubin. Prior to that, he was Curator of Special Collections in the Society’s research library and founded its Harry N. Baetjer III Junior Fellows Program, a summer internship and seminar for exceptional high school students of wide-ranging backgrounds and interests. Mr. Grom is also board secretary at the Delaware Center for Horticulture and treasurer of the Fine Objects Society, a transatlantic organization that launched in New York City earlier this month with great momentum. As a conference organizer and moderator, he has led regional and national dialogue on generational bias and mission-driven capital planning. He studied piano and musicology at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Case Western Reserve University, and American history and material culture at the University of Delaware, investigating the relationship between manuscript culture, print culture, and collective memory in early American sacred music. He has held research fellowships at numerous institutions, among them the American Antiquarian Society, Library of Congress, University of Michigan, and Historic Deerfield.
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