Midterm Mayhem: America Votes, the World Watches
Donald Trump is not on the ballot this November, yet the midterm elections will be read as a referendum on him. With every House seat and a third of the Senate up for grabs, one of the most polarizing presidents in modern American history will face a major political test. Tonight, our experts will weigh the likely outcomes.
Will voters punish Republicans for rising prices and a costly war with Iran, or will entrenched partisanship prevail? Will apathy prove the most decisive force among the electorate? And will a president who has questioned the legitimacy of past elections respect the results?
The panelists will also look beyond the ballot box. What is at stake for Americans—whether citizens, legal residents, or undocumented migrants? What will the results mean for Europe, the Middle East, and the Global South? What media stories matter most to international onlookers? And how will right-wing populists abroad interpret the outcome of the US elections, as they reflect on vulnerabilities and opportunities of their own?
Speakers
Andrew Gawthorpe is a scholar whose research focuses on the modern and contemporary United States. Though a historian by training, his work engages with insights from other disciplines, particularly international relations and American politics. He is currently the principal investigator on the NWO Vidi-funded project “American foreign policy and liberalism”. This project challenges the notion of an American-created “liberal international order” by investigating how the American approach to international order has been shaped by illiberal ideologies, such as those underpinning racism at home or imperialism abroad.
Jack Thompson is Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the influence of political culture on US grand strategy, efforts to rebalance the transatlantic relationship, the history of US conservatism, the radicalization of the US right, and democratic backsliding. His 2019 book, Great Power Rising: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of US Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press), won the 2020 Theodore Roosevelt Association Book Prize.
Katjana Gattermann is Associate Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR). Her work focusses on media-politics relations and election campaigns in the European Union as well as their consequences for attitudes and electoral behaviour of European citizens.
Katy Hull (moderator) is Assistant Professor of Modern Gender History in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her first book was The Machine Has a Soul: American Sympathy with Italian Fascism (Princeton University Press, 2021). Her current research project investigates the construction of emotions in New Left activist autobiographies.
