Join us for the keynote event at "Tolerance Under Strain: Liberalism, Its Critics, and the Problem of Coexistence," a conference co-sponsored by the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom & Democracy and the Illiberalism Studies Program. Moderated by John Hopkins University's Lilliana Hall Mason, this dialogue will feature Sheri Berman, professor of political science at Barnard, and Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at Brookings.

Please register in advance!

This is a hybrid event. Watch our livestream on Zoom.

Conference Details:

Tolerance has long functioned as a central discipline of pluralistic societies: a way of living with deep disagreement without requiring consensus, affirmation or suppression. In recent decades, it has faced challenges from multiple directions. Critics on the left argue that liberal tolerance masks domination and that tolerating hate speech harms the vulnerable. Critics on the right contend that tolerance has been weaponized into a demand for affirmation, or that it has hollowed out the moral commitments necessary for social cohesion. Still others, from postliberal traditions, reject tolerance in favor of thicker visions of the common good rooted in shared religious or moral authority.

This conference adopts a diagnostic approach, aiming to clarify what is at stake in contemporary disputes over tolerance and to explore the conditions under which coexistence remains possible in morally divided societies.