Saturday, May 2, 2026

Special Edition: Political Violence & Division- Can We Come Together?

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How did American politics get so polarized, and how worried should we be about more political violence?

Political scientist Lily Mason explains what most Americans actually believe, why threats and harassment are rising, and what can make divisions worse or better — from national rhetoric to local politics.

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Guest: Lilliana Mason

Lilliana Mason is SNF Agora Institute Professor of Political Science.

She is co-author, with Nathan P. Kalmoe, of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2022), and author of UUncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

She received her PhD in political psychology from Stony Brook University and her BA in politics from Princeton University. Her research on partisan identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American social polarization has been published in journals such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Behavior, and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio.

Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Facebook Research Integrity Group, and the Democracy Fund.

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