Joanne Goodman Lecture Series | Department of Politics

Hosted by Western University

The lecture series brings three internationally renowned Goodman lecturers to Western University to examine the state of democracy in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Their talks will offer historical and comparative insights into today’s democratic challenges, while also highlighting the strengths and sources of resilience within democratic systems.

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The State of Democracy

Date: September 23-25, 2025
Location: Great Hall, Somerville House, Room 3326, Western University

Each fall, Western University hosts a distinguished historian to deliver three public lectures over consecutive days, engaging students, faculty and the London community. Established in 1975 by the Honourable Edwin A. Goodman and his family in memory of their daughter—a second-year History student who tragically died in a highway accident that year—the series explores the history of Canada, the United States and the U.K.

The endowment supports the publication of these lectures, many of which have become influential books. Widely regarded as Canada’s most prestigious history lecture series, the Goodman Lectures are highly respected both nationally and internationally.

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Presented by the Department of History, Western University.

Featured Speakers

Martha S. Jones

Date: September 23, 2025
Time: 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.

Today, positing the United States as a beacon of democracy invites us to add a question mark. Few observers can say how the current chapter in the nation's democratic history will end, and still, no one would deny that a sea-change is underway. For much of the nation's past, dubbing the US a beacon of democracy has been a powerful, pride-filled claim. And still, in 2025, the same statement can only be heard as a question: Will the US remain a democracy at home and a beacon that guides nations across the globe toward their own democratic futures? This talk regards the claim that the US is a beacon of democracy as less a triumphalist truth and more a national myth. An idea with roots in the 1830s, the myth has grown up and flourished while the nation's soil has been tilled by anti-democratic forces. The inclusion of Black history in the story of American democracy makes evident that the question mark has always been there.

Martha Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She also directs the Hard Histories at Hopkins Project which investigates the history of slavery and racism connected with Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. Her research is dedicated to understanding the politics, culture, and poetics of Black America. Her latest book The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (2025) recounts her personal journey with race and color through the story of her ancestors' generations.

Dennis M. Pilon

Date: September 24, 2025
Time: 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.

This talk will use the question of 'when' to explore the contours of Canadian democracy, both in the past and the present. Despite a general consensus amongst academics, media and the public that Canada is a democracy and has been for some time there has been surprisingly little study of just what qualifies Canada for the label, other than an adherence to holding elections in a reasonably free and fair manner. Exploring the question of just when Canada became a democracy will give us some insight into what democracy has meant to different people at different times, what was seen to be at stake in the debate and struggle over it, and how we might use those insights to assess what Canadian democracy amounts to today.

Dennis Pilon is a Professor and Chair of the Politics Department at York University. His research focuses on democracy, democratization, elections, voting systems, and class as a political identity, in both Canadian and comparative contexts. His most recent publications include "Is Class Political? The Challenges in Studying Working Class Politics in Canada," in The Working Class and Politics in Canada (UBC Press 2025). "Democracy in the West," in The New Politics of Western Canada: Contested Histories, Uncertain Futures (UBC Press 2025), and "The Democratic State," in The Canadian State (Fernwood 2025).

Jan-Werner Müller

Date: September 25, 2025
Time: 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.

The lecture evokes a tradition of legal and political thought virtually unknown in North America until recently: the idea of "militant democracy," first formulated by the exiled German jurist Karl Loewenstein in the mid-1930s. The core idea - now much discussed in the US is that democracies should take pre-emptive measures against its enemies - even of such enemies have not broken any laws and are participating in regular political competition. The lecture revisits the arguments for and against militant democracy.

Jan-Werner Müller is Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences and Director of the Program in Political Philosophy at Princeton University. His research focuses on democratic theory and the history of modern political thought. He has published widely on the transatlantic histories of political thought including Democracy Rules (2021), What is Populism (2016), Contesting Democracy (2011), Constitutional Patriotism (2007). A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (2003).