Religion & the Rise of Populisms: Difference, Dissent, and Tolerance

This two-year project will involve regional conferences at the Columbia Global Centers in Paris and Amman, with a concluding workshop in New York, to think comparatively about the rise of the “new populism,” a term increasingly used across the globe to characterize recent political trends in which leaders mobilize social groups for political action through emotionally compelling messages of economic uplift, nationalism, the wresting of power from entrenched elites and the protection of a way of life. The project will focus on populist movements in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. The conferences will consider the distinct local histories of various forms of populism, focusing particularly on the role of changing media in political appeals to publics that are constituted through religious, economic, ethnic, and class imagery. We will draw together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from Columbia and other universities, as well as journalists, people in government, and religious leaders, who will investigate comparatively the various forces that come together to produce “populist” movements, focusing on the role of religious and ethical claims in mobilizing a politically powerful electorate in the name of populist goals.