Healing a Fractured Democracy: Professor Brent Nelsen on the Divided States of America

Director of the Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society at Furman University, Professor Nelsen explores the legacy of Alexis de Tocqueville, while highlighting the deepening divides in American democracy, and the role universities can play in bridging them.

“It wasn't just right of center views. We bring in left of center people. We want them in contact, and in conversation with people on the right…I think the Tocqueville Center is maybe the only institution at Furman right now that is consciously trying to bring people from different perspectives together on the same stage, so that they can have a conversation in front of all of us.” — Professor Brent Nelsen

Professor Nelsen’s journey through worldly politics began in the Midwest. From the Milwaukee suburbs, his path to becoming a political philosopher led him to pursue a Ph.D. in political science. 

“My dissertation was on petroleum policy in Britain and Norway,” he shares. “I started out in international relations, eventually moved into comparative politics with international relations as a complementary field.”

His focus then was on Europe and its domestic politics. But when he began applying for jobs, his course shifted.

“Furman popped up,” he says. “It was a legendary department at the time, and so it was a very good fit for me.” At Furman University, Professor Nelsen soon found the Tocqueville Center, established in 2008, to restore intellectual foundations for students.

"They had in their mind that students at Furman, but also at a lot of other places, were no longer getting some of the foundational work that any good university educated student ought to have,” he says, highlighting the “big questions of American political economics, social, religious life.”

Named after Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who came to the United States in 1831 and wrote his famous work called Democracy in America, the Program draws on the insights of that piece as a roadmap for present day politics.

Professor Nelsen explains the contemporary relevance of the Tocqueville legacy. “Tocqueville saw, in 1831…that eventually there would be a tyranny of the majority, or a tyranny of the presidency.”

The discussion then turns to America’s widening internal divide, and Professor Nelsen cautions that the dangers are stark.

“We are living in a time when this polarization goes so deep as to actually color what people think is true, and isn’t true. What facts are real, and what facts are false," he says. “And that means that conversation doesn't actually settle the problem.”

The solution, Professor Nelsen believes, is on college campuses. “This is a college campus where people at least still believe that rationality is important.”

“We are going to have to live together in a way that allows each view, and I know the world is not binary. It's not just two views, but we need to give each other the freedom to live the lives that we want to live,” he suggests. “We're going to have to make compromises. Everybody is going to have to make compromises.”

At Furman, programs like On Discourse try to aid in bridging some of those gaps. “We try to figure out why this person believes what he or she believes,” he explains. “Sometimes I think we’re not going to agree on those facts, but we can begin to understand where somebody gets their facts from.”

In a time when polarization often silences dialogue, Professor Nelsen sees the Tocqueville Center as a small but vital step forward. “I think we are doing an important thing here. We're building community in an intellectual environment,” he offers. 

Listen to the full episode of Waitt, What? The Podcast for Professor Brent Nelsen’s insights on democracy, universities, and America’s path forward.

You can follow Samuel Waitt for additional insights on world politics by subscribing to his Substack: samuelwaitt.substack.com and read the book: Waitt, What?: Reflections on Global Politics – available on Amazon.