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Constitution

Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett Visit Wheatley Institute

Wheatley gets a visit from the authors of "The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again"

Coauthors Robert D. Putnam, a Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, an award-winning writer and “social cause entrepreneur” discussed their recent book, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again.

They discussed how one hundred years ago, America successfully banded together amid four difficult factors: social isolation, political polarization, economic inequality, and cultural self-centeredness; an overcoming that Putnam and Garrett have named “The Upswing.” America is again experiencing those factors of isolation and polarization. We had the pleasure of learning what we as Americans can do to help our current cultural climate of disunity and polarization to create a modern-day upswing. Putnam highlighted, “You can change things. Indeed, the only way that really serious change happens is because individual people decide they’re going to change things!” Romney Garrett went on to say, “We’ve been in a mess just like the one we are in today. History shows that there’s the hope of getting out of it but we have to start today, we have to start in places that might be less familiar to us. Places of the heart, places of connection, to rebuild that social fabric and sense of cohesion that’s going to bring us back toward ‘we’.”

Watch the highlights video here.
Watch the full lecture here.