The democracy advocate and former chess grandmaster praised Nationhood Lab’s work in an introduction to project director Colin Woodard’s guest essay
Nationhood Lab’s director presented the project’s findings on a shared American story in an invited guest essay for The Next Move, democracy advocate and former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov’s widely read substack site.
The essay, “Yes, There’s Still a Shared American Identity,” was introduced by Kasparov himself, who praised Nationhood Lab’s work on a rebooted civic national narrative for the United States.
“At The Next Move, we don’t just want to focus on our nation’s divisions,” Kasparov wrote in his introduction. “Our purpose is to offer a positive vision for the nation’s future. That’s why Colin Woodard’s research and insight are key. A world-class intellectual, whose research has revealed the differences among Americans, his new project points us toward what we have in common.”
In his essay, published May 2, Woodard shared some of the results from Nationhood Lab’s recent report, The Story of America: a rebooted national narrative for the United States, which draws on the ideals in the Declaration of Independence. “These are values the vast majority of Americans align on, a reference point that you can return to in order to judge politicians’ actions and persuade your fellow citizens,” he wrote.
The Next Move is published by the Renew Democracy Initiative, the non-profit founded and chaired by Kasparov, which aims to inspire Americans and citizens of other free countries to defend their democracies.
Nationhood Lab, a project at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, delivers more effective tools with which to describe and defend the American liberal democratic tradition and better understand the forces undermining it.