LibCon2025 Receives Rave Reviews
As Trump's troops rolled into the nation's capital, attendees at our second annual convening at the Watergate Hotel left recharged and determined to fight authoritarianism
Last Thursday, Aug. 14, ISMA President and The UnPopulist Editor-in-Chief Shikha Dalmia kicked off LibCon2025 with a rousing opening address by emphasizing that true liberals ought to learn from Frederick Douglass and strive for moral clarity—not moral purity—to build a broad coalition to defeat authoritarianism:
America’s genius is not that it draws the best people but that it draws the best out of people. Even the world’s “wretched” manage to make something of themselves here.
But we are getting a first-hand taste of what happens when liberal democracy starts to collapse. …
Authoritarian consolidation is Trump’s true Operation Warp Speed. After 250 years as a constitutional republic, America has stunningly shown that it had no exceptional institutional immunity to the authoritarian virus. Like everywhere else, all it has is us liberals.
So we have our work cut out for us. …
We need to fashion a broad countermovement to replace the old right/left divide with a new liberal/illiberal one, as I tell anyone willing to listen. That means opposing bigotry and uniting around core liberal values: tolerance, pluralism, equal protection under the law, and accountable rulers. …
Solidifying a new alignment won’t be easy. Why? Because it’s easier to know our enemies than our friends. That’s one big reason there aren’t that many examples in the world of successful resistance movements yet. … Building a liberal coalition requires getting former political foes to learn to trust one another and negotiate their inevitable moral disagreements.
We’ll have to overlook what we regard as each other’s past transgressions. We’ll have to live with disagreements over whether non-right-wing threats to liberalism are worth addressing, or mere distractions. We’ll have to thrash out differences over how much to concede to our opponents to secure electoral victories. … As in any workable marriage, we can’t paper over these differences. But we also can’t let them turn into separate Netflix accounts.
But one thing we must bear in mind is that although moral clarity will help our effort—insisting on moral purity would be self-defeating.
We had published her remarks in their entirety as she delivered them. But we now have the video.
Take a few minutes to watch her opening address and then share it with fellow liberals because, as Shikha said, we need to “join hands to defeat the bullies and the tyrants and defend a reinvigorated Liberalism for the 21st Century.”
In addition to Shikha’s conference opener, we have been publishing select portions of LibCon2025 here—including Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza’s powerful and memorable dinner keynote and the insightful and sobering opening panel on “Liberalism at a Time of Constitutional Crisis” featuring , , , and .
We have also just put up most of the conference panels as full videos on our YouTube page, which you should subscribe to if you don’t already!
With about 325 attendees, this year’s conference was even bigger than last year’s. We sold out several days in advance. The mood was somber given Trump’s decision to send in the troops to deal with D.C.’s “crime” problem. But the attendees left recharged and ever more determined to fight for liberalism.
By every reasonable measure, the event was a big success. But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s just a small sampling of the reactions we’ve received.
Ahead of this year’s conference, Protect Democracy perfectly captured one of our most important aspirations for the event:
The Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism’s “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference gathers a community to—among many things—develop an intellectual framework for democratic resilience.
The responses we have received so far confirm that LibCon2025 fulfilled this objective.
and , who had attended last year’s conference and published glowing recaps, had this to say about LibCon2025.
Young:
This conference is great. Absolutely fantastic event.
The second-annual “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference was, by all accounts, a huge success. Organizer Shikha Dalmia deserves considerable praise for conjuring this event and its rapidly expanding network of participants and supporters out of thin air over the past two years. Doing something like this is an enormous amount of work, and she’s the one whose vision, energy, and talent made it happen. Bravo.
This time around, the venue was much larger than it was last summer, and attendance at the panels was quite high, with most seats filled with an attentive audience (that asked consistently thoughtful questions during the Q&As) from midday Thursday through the final event late Friday afternoon. I’m proud to be a part of this group and to have contributed to a panel this year—and I have every intention of attending and taking part in any way I can at next year’s summer gathering in the nation’s capital.
Their views were echoed by other attendees, including Thomas Mortimer of the Hertog Foundation. In a note to us, he said:
This year’s “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference has been one of the most rewarding intellectual experiences of my adult life.
As a young adult, I see many among my generation who are skeptical of liberal democracy. It is disheartening to see bright young people entertain illiberal ideas because they believe liberal democracy is incapable of adequately confronting the global crises of today.
And yet, this conference has renewed my hope in the spirit of liberalism. Thanks to your efforts, I met a remarkable group of people—working across academia, journalism, and politics in defense of democracy—who were all curious, tenacious, and brave. It was an empowering experience and has inspired me to get more active in defending liberalism at the grassroots level.
Thank you again for organizing a convening that I will cherish for years to come.
, a The UnPopulist contributor and author of the Nobody Wants This newsletter, found LibCon2025 invigorating:
LibCon2025 was sobering and energizing, confirming and challenging, deep and expansive. I left better understanding the challenges we face, armed with more expert resources, and feeling more bonded to those fighting authoritarianism across the globe.
Sydnee Lipset, editor of arts and culture at American Purpose, wrote:
Shikha Dalmia and the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism once again assembled an impressive and exciting roster of speakers with enormous insights into liberalism for the 21st century. Another triumph.
, prolific author and commentator—and a contributor at The UnPopulist—said this:
The conference was amazing. I especially enjoyed Vladimir Kara-Murza and Jack Goldsmith. ... It was a grand two days!
, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center and frequent contributor to The Bulwark, was inspired by LibCon2025:
The conference was spectacular—and inspiring. I can’t thank you enough for having produced it. I missed the first one and I am already looking forward to next year’s.
Two attendees, Michael Senters and Dachte, posted their reactions online.
Got to meet a lot of cool people and attend a bunch of insightful panels that stimulated conversations about what liberalism needs to do going forward. Thanks to The UnPopulist and ISMA for putting this on. Hopefully in an unoccupied city next year!
Really glad I decided to come to the “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference in D.C. Met a lot of people I consider intellectual luminaries. Got to talk linguistics with
, met , Bill Kristol, Vladimir Kara-Murza, people from FIRE, etc.
Conference participants also had glowing remarks about the event. The Washington Post columnist León Krauze, who was on the panel that focused on practical strategies for resisting authoritarianism, found LibCon2025 “invaluable”:
ISMA’s liberalism conference was an extraordinary opportunity to discuss the challenges we face in a turbulent world—but it was also something more. It was an invitation to action rather than mere reflection. In each of the discussion panels, I found an emphasis that went beyond diagnosis and focused instead on concrete prescriptions to safeguard liberal values in the 21st century. The experience is always invaluable.
Poland’s Zryw Foundation’s , who was also on that panel, echoed Krauze:
I thought LibCon2025 was a great success! I really appreciated that the panels were thoughtfully curated, and that there weren't ever more than 3 people on a panel, so that there was plenty of good discussion. I liked that the conference wasn't overwhelming in its size, attendees were always present and listening. Very professionally organized. Great group of people.
After Shikha’s opening address, Suketu Mehta, literary icon and author of the celebrated Maximum City, set the tone with his poignant keynote, “Boiling the Frog: What Does the Transition from Liberalism to Illiberalism Feel Like?” Suketu had this to say about his experience at LibCon2025:
For two riveting days and nights, on the site of one of the greatest crimes in American political history, we discussed the continuing political crimes being perpetrated in the nation and the world, as heavily armed troops roamed the streets outside. But in the conference halls of the Watergate Hotel, ISMA’s “Liberalism for the 21st Century” created an oasis of sanity, spirited debate, and searching examination of some of the most important issues facing humanity. I was very fortunate to be part of this superstar gathering, and look forward to next year's conference, which promises to be even bigger and better.
Liberal Currents’ , who participated in the breakout panel discussion called “Liberalism Beyond Elites” (video coming soon), called LibCon2025 a “big step” forward:
I thought ISMA did an incredible job making this an international conference. They brought together: Russian dissidents, Bosnian politicians, Polish campaign strategists, Mexican journalists, Singaporean philosophers. The authoritarians recognize that their cause is an international cause. They work together gladly across international lines. We liberals need to reconstruct the idea of the liberal project as a genuinely worldwide project. We need to look for allies not just at home but abroad. ISMA’s LibCon2025 is a big step in that direction.
, professor of international politics at Tufts University, had this to say as part of a longer series of reflections on the conference:
The [Liberalism for the 21st Century] conference clarif[ied] the most important question that needs to be answered: can liberalism fight the good fight against illiberal forces without embracing illiberal tactics?
(Dan does not like our nickname for the conference, LibCon. We happen to be quite fond of it, but, hey, so long as we agree on defending liberalism, what’s in a name?)
Harvard professor and renowned cognitive scientist , who along with bestselling author and podcaster closed out the conference, said this:
A splendid and important conference. I learned a lot, and met a lot of interesting people.
This was only a sampling of the reactions. The common thread? LibCon2025 did what it set out to do: gather together some of the world’s leading liberal thinkers, journalists, and advocates to counter the rise of illiberalism and chart a course forward for a liberalism that can answer the challenges of the modern era.
Stay tuned for more content from LibCon2025.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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Congratulations! We need these principled voices more than ever.
I hope I hear about Libcon 2026 in time to try to attend. I guess I hope even more that it will be held somewhere in the US, right out in the open, instead of some secret place to avoid the not-so-secret police.