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Liberal democracies rely on truth-seeking institutions insulated from, or capable of rising above, partisan politics: science, universities, and serious journalism. Each were politicized and degraded under Covid. Based on their forthcoming book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton University Press, March 2025), Macedo and Lee trace how leaders made policy during the worst pandemic in over a century. In so doing, they contend that educated elites need to soberly examine their performance, assess their own biases and blind spots, and strive to be more worthy of the public’s trust.

Lecture One: ‘Following the Science’ Before and During the Covid Pandemic

Lecture Two: Noble Lies and Democracy Under Covid

Frances Lee is professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Her research focuses on U.S. national politics and policymaking. She is author of Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaignand Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate. She is also coauthor of In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us; The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era; and Sizing Up The Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation. She is the recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on American national policy and its Richard F. Fenno prize for the best book in legislative studies.

Stephen Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His books include Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism; Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy; Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage; and the co-authored, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us. He won the American Philosophical Association’s 1997 Berger Prize for “Homosexuality and the Conservative Mind.” A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2014, and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters since October 2024, he is also immediate past-President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, and a former vice president of the American Political Science Association.