UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs hosted Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times and best-selling author, for a virtual event as part of our 2021 Phil Lind Initiative series on The Anti-Democratic Turn.
Series: The unprecedented assault on the rules and norms of democracy in the US over the past four years has exposed its vulnerability. The problems have become all too familiar: corruption, disinformation, foreign interference, gerrymandering, social media complicity, voter suppression, and the previously inconceivable threat that the outgoing president would refuse to concede and instead launch a series of futile but harmful legal challenges to democracy itself. Despite the eventual outcome of the presidential election, democracy in the US may not be as resilient as we once thought. If we accept that the previous administration is a symptom of more deeply rooted problems in American society, how do we begin to address these emerging fault lines in the democratic process? How can we protect the integrity of our democracies in an era marked by authoritarian resurgence and nativist backlash?
Learn more about the 2021 series, The Anti-Democratic Turn.
Bio: Charles M. Blow is an Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times, where his column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. Mr. Blow’s columns tackle hot-button issues such as social justice, racial equality, presidential politics, police violence, gun control, and the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Mr. Blow is also a CNN commentator and was a Presidential Visiting Professor at Yale, where he taught a seminar on media and politics.
Mr. Blow is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. The book won a Lambda Literary Award and the Sperber Prize and made multiple prominent lists of best books published in 2014. People Magazine called it “searing and unforgettable.”
Mr. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. In that role, he led The Times to a best of show award from the Society for News Design for The Times’ information graphics coverage of 9/11, the first time the award had been given for graphics coverage. He also led the paper to its first two best of show awards from the Malofiej Infographics World Summit for work that included coverage of the Iraq war. He then went on to become the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic Magazine. Before coming to The Times, Mr. Blow had worked at The Detroit News.
He graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University in Louisiana, where he received a B.A. in mass communications, and he holds an honorary doctorate from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. He lives in Brooklyn and has three children.
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