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DEMOCRACY FORUM
Meet the Authors of "On Courage"
On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear is a new, best-selling book that’s made for this moment—and a book written for all of us who are trying to defend democracy in these perilous, promising times. Join us for a special gathering with Julia Angwin, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a native Palo Altan, and Ami Fields-Meyer, a former policy advisor to Kamala Harris. Angwin and Fields-Meyer will be in conversation with IPA+ leader and former human rights activist David Waksberg..
A Q&A session and a book signing will follow the conversation. Copies of the book will be available for purchase. Snacks and beverages will be provided. Feel free to bring a brown bag lunch.
Wednesday, July 29 | 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
First Presbyterian Church
1140 Cowper Street
Palo Alto
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Julia Angwin
Ami Fields-Meyer
Ami Fields-Meyer
Julia Angwin is an award-winning investigative journalist, a bestselling author, a New York Times contributing Opinion writer, and founding director of the Independent Media + Audience Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She is the founder of two nonprofit newsrooms—Proof News and T
Julia Angwin is an award-winning investigative journalist, a bestselling author, a New York Times contributing Opinion writer, and founding director of the Independent Media + Audience Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She is the founder of two nonprofit newsrooms—Proof News and The Markup—that investigate the impacts of technology. She is a winner and two time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance (Times Books, 2014) and Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (Random House, March 2009).
Ami Fields-Meyer
Ami Fields-Meyer
Ami Fields-Meyer
Ami Fields-Meyer is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and a former senior policy advisor at the White House, where he led U.S. policy initiatives related to civil rights, consumer protection, and technology policy. He has served as a strategist to national civil rights organizations, politi
Ami Fields-Meyer is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and a former senior policy advisor at the White House, where he led U.S. policy initiatives related to civil rights, consumer protection, and technology policy. He has served as a strategist to national civil rights organizations, political candidates, and high-profile public officials from Los Angeles City Hall to the West Wing. Fields-Meyer’s writing on issues of democracy and public policy has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy and other outlets. A former speechwriter, he is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Background
On Courage is a deeply reported manual about how anyone can defy an authoritarian—based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.
The United States is only the latest country to face a leader who wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, disappears people off the street, and undermines free and fair elections. Today nearly three out of four people on earth live under authoritarianism, the highest rate since the late 1970s.
But even under repressive conditions, each of us holds the power to help defeat autocrats. Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?,” veteran reporter Julia Angwin and political strategist Ami Fields-Meyer give us a captivating—and profoundly hopeful—guide to courage in an age of fear.
Meet a student from Hong Kong who risked everything for democracy. A mom in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas who broke with the political movement that raised her. Cairo twentysomethings who staged a gutsy stunt to help bring down a dictator. A mild-mannered immigrant fighting to save a landmark U.S. civil rights law. People throughout the United States and across five continents who faced serious risks for dissenting in their workplace, their community, or their country. On Courage is the story of how they did it anyway—and how you can do it, too.
Blending rich, previously untold narratives with history, spirituality, and movement research, Angwin and Fields-Meyer deliver a highly accessible book full of practical lessons—an inspiring resource for anyone, anywhere, who feel the walls of history closing in on them. On Courage is a roadmap to political courage and a powerful case for how taking personal risks can help save the free world.
