The Socrates Project: Breckenridge Memorial Lecture: Legislating in Polarized Times

This lecture was presented in honour of McMaster University Professor George Breckenridge, who was a member of the Department of Political Science for over 50 years, and where he continued to teach courses in US and comparative politics until his passing in 2019. Among his many lasting contributions to McMaster, George played a pivotal role in leading the Trump Talk Series. The George Breckenridge Memorial Fund has been established to support students studying political science at McMaster University. View this exciting talk by Dr. Sarah A. Binder entitled Congress and Crisis: Legislating in Polarized Times. Dr. Binder discusses the politics of legislating in polarized times. Why does the U.S. Congress struggle to address salient public problems, and what can we learn from its responses thus far to the coronavirus crisis? This was the final lecture in the far-reaching Trump Talk series launched and curated by Dr. George Breckenridge. Sarah A. Binder is a professor of political science at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She studies Congress, both its historical development and contemporary politics. She is the author or co-author of seven books and over 30 articles, including The Dysfunctional Congress and Dodging the Rules in Trump’s Republican Congress. Sarah is also an editor and contributor to The Monkey Cage, a political science blog at The Washington Post. This is the concluding lecture in the Trump Talk series. In partnership with the Department of Political Science, McMaster Alumni, and McMaster Centre for Continuing Education.