Across the United States and Europe, liberal democratic norms are being challenged. These growing movements are not only political projects but also cultural and intellectual ones, reshaping debates about nationalism, sovereignty and pluralism. From the ideological reconfiguration of American conservatism after the election of Donald Trump to the rise of populist movements in Europe, a new landscape of ideas is taking shape. One that connects domestic culture wars with broader geopolitical visions.

On April 21st, the Netherlands Atlantic Association will host Laura Field and Marlene Laruelle, two leading scholars of ideology and political thought to examine these transformations. Field and Laruelle will explore how contemporary conservative and nationalist movements are reconfiguring political alignments, and global debates about liberalism. Field’s recent book, Furious Minds, provides an entry point into these questions, tracing the intellectual networks behind the American New Right. The conversation will be moderated by Casper Thomas (De Groene Amsterdammer, Het Financieele Dagblad).

Schedule:

15:30 – Doors Open

16:00 – Event Starts

17:30 – Expected End

Tickets are available through the link below. Students and patrons of the Netherlands Atlantic Association can get tickets at a reduced price:

Please note: Nieuwspoort is located inside the current building of the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer). Due to security measures, all attendees must register in advance via this link. Identification is mandatory.

https://atlcom.stager.co/shop/default/events/111637541

Biographies:

Laura K. Field is an associate with the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and visiting scholar in residence at American University. A political theorist by training, she holds a PhD in government from the University of Texas at Austin, and has held faculty positions at Rhodes College in Memphis, Georgetown University, and American University in Washington, DC. In addition to her academic work she has written for The New Republic, Politico, The Bulwark, Le Monde, The New York Times and The Atlantic. Her book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right is now out with Princeton University Press. She lives in Washington, DC.

Marlene Laruelle is Full Professor in the Department of Political Science at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. From 2011 to 2025, she served at The George Washington University as Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES), where she was Associate Director and later Director (2015–2022). She leads the Illiberalism Studies Program, a pioneering transatlantic platform for research and dialogue on illiberalism and postliberalism as global ideological phenomena. She has recently edited the Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism (2024).