Hamilton College will host its annual Constitution Day Lecture at 4:10 p.m. on Thursday, September 11, in the Chapel on campus. The event is free and open to the public.

This year’s lecture, “The Great Abdication: America’s Descent into Authoritarianism and How to Reverse It,” will be delivered by Lucan Ahmad Way, Distinguished Professor of Democracy of the Royal Society of Canada and professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

Way is a leading scholar on democracy and authoritarianism worldwide. He received his B.A. from Harvard College and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His research examines global patterns of democratic resilience and authoritarian durability. His works include:

• Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (Princeton University Press), co-authored with Steven Levitsky.
• Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press).
• Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (Cambridge University Press), also co-authored with Levitsky, a foundational study on hybrid political systems.