Margaret Levi, professor of political science at Stanford University, will address the structural challenges of today’s democracies at the 2018 Linowes lecture.

The lecture will be hosted by the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the College of Education building Tuesday at 4 p.m.

Levi said she hopes the lecture will help foster a deeper understanding of conditions under which citizens develop trust in the government and believe the government is legitimate. It will also look into how the conditions affect government trustworthiness and legitimacy.

Daniel Shalmon, external engagement coordinator for the Cline Center, said the lecture will be appealing to many departments across campus.

“The purpose of these lectures is to bring people who are at the very top of their fields and who have expertise in a policy relevant to the campus,” Shalmon said. “As for this topic area, (Levi) fits the bill perfectly,” Shalmon said.

Shalmon said Levi will be discussing the question of how people can come to accept a system of government as legitimate, functional, reasonably confident and morally justified.

“A lot of us, professional political scientists, feel we don’t really have a grip on the sweeping changes and sort of sense of discontent that is sweeping across Western democracies,” Shalmon said.

Levi will also be conducting small group meetings with graduate students as well as one-on-one meetings with faculty.

Shalmon said this is an opportunity for the largest amount of people to interact with the speaker, as it will be open to the public and live streamed. There will also be time for questions at the end.

“(Students) are the citizens of the future,” Levi said. “They are the ones who will determine what we’re like for many years to come.”

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