The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics is pleased to host a special Danforth Dialogues event focused on the 2024 presidential election. Realistic Hope: American Democracy and the 2024 Election will explore the place of faith and imagination in our current politics and public life.

The Danforth Dialogues will be held in Graham Chapel on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The event will consist of a set of two conversations moderated by John Dickerson of CBS News. The first panel, with the poet Joy Harjo and novelist Valeria Luiselli, will prompt us to ponder how creativity and the arts can inflect our politics with hope that guides us through persistent dilemmas. The second panel, with New York Times Columnist Jamelle Bouie and former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger, will concern the prospects for the 2024 presidential election—where it stands and what we can anticipate.

Our design is for these conversations to help us gain a deeper understanding of our national politics and do so with hopeful realism that equips each of us to play a part in sustaining American democracy.

Event schedule

October 10, 2024
5:00 p.m. – 7:45 p.m. (with intermission), The Danforth Dialogues in Graham Chapel at Washington University in St. Louis
8:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m., Reception with event participants for all ticketed audience members in the Clark-Fox Forum in Hillman Hall

This is a free, ticketed event. Tickets will be required to attend the Graham Chapel program and the reception immediately following.

To register for tickets, visit our Eventbrite page here. As always, you can contact us at rap@wustl.edu or 314-935-9345 with questions.

More about our speakers

Jamelle Bouie, a columnist for the New York Times and former political analyst for CBS News, covers U.S. politics, public policy, elections, and race. Bouie’s political instincts provide audiences with unique insight on the past, present, and future of our national politics, policy, and the state of race relations. As he did while writing for Slate and the Daily Beast, Bouie shares eye-opening perspectives on issues concerning the issues at play in America today. Jamelle Bouie appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation. His writings have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Time, and The New Yorker. Bouie uses his unique perspective to take audiences to the front lines of the nation’s most significant news events, from civil unrest to political partisanship. He has emerged as a leading voice on the national scene, being named to Forbes “30 Under 30 in Media” in 2015.

John Dickerson is the host of CBS Primetime with John Dickerson, a CBS News Chief Political Analyst, Senior National Correspondent, and CBS Sunday Morning Contributor. He recently published his third book, and second New York Times Best-Seller The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency. Dickerson was previously co-anchor of CBS This Morning. From 2015 to 2018 he was anchor of Face The Nation, and CBS News’ Chief Washington Correspondent. Dickerson is also a contributing writer to The Atlantic and co-host of Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast and host of the Whistlestop podcast. Dickerson joined CBS News in April 2009, as an analyst and contributor. For six years, he served as the Network’s political director. He was moderator of Face The Nation from June 2015 to January 2018 and Chief Washington Correspondent. During the 2016 presidential campaign he moderated CBS News’ two presidential debates. From January 2018 until May 2019 he was co-host of CBS This Morning. In 2019, Dickerson was a contributor for 60 Minutes while serving as the network’s lead political analyst. Dickerson started his career with Time magazine, covering economics, Congress, and the presidency. In the last four years of his twelve at the magazine, he was its White House correspondent. From 2005 to 2015, he was Slate magazine’s chief political correspondent. He has covered the last seven presidential campaigns. He is the recipient of the Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and the David Broder Award for political reporting.

Joy Harjo, the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee Nation, is the author of ten books of poetry, several plays, children’s books, two memoirs, and seven music albums. Her honors include Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.

From 2011-2022, Adam Kinzinger served six terms in the United States House of Representatives, where he represented Illinois’ Sixteenth Congressional District, which stretches across 14 counties in Northern Illinois. While in Congress, Kinzinger served as a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he served as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy and the Environment in the 116th Congress. He also served on the non-partisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Prior to being elected to Congress, Kinzinger served in the Air Force in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Kinzinger continues to serve his country as a pilot in the Air National Guard, with the current rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and balanced this service with his duties in Congress. As one of only two Republicans on the January 6th Committee, Rep. Kinzinger stood against his own party in pursuit of democracy and justice. Shortly after the insurrection at the Capitol, Congressman Kinzinger started the Country First movement, which has grown rapidly to over 100,000 members today and counting. Kinzinger recounts his story of faith, service, and political duty in a democracy under siege in his New York Times best-selling memoir Renegade.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of  Sidewalks, Faces in the Crowd, The Story of My Teeth, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and Lost Children Archive. She is the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship and the winner of DUBLIN Literary Award, two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, The Carnegie Medal, an American Book Award,  and has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Booker Prize. She has been a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and the recipient of a Bearing Witness Fellowship from the Art for Justice Fund. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney’s, among other publications, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She teaches at Bard College and is a visiting professor at Harvard University.

Please contact us at (314) 935-9345 or rap@wustl.edu should you need additional information or assistance.