March 17, 2025
CAMDEN, MAINE – The director of Salve Regina University’s Nationhood Lab presented on the crisis facing American democracy and the need for a rebooted, ideal-based story of national purpose and belonging at the 2025 Camden Conference.
“Americans value our democracy, but they need leadership, direction, and a sense they’re not alone, that they’re in this together,” Colin Woodard told the audience of 480 at the Camden Opera House and, via livestream, to hundreds of high school and college students across the country.
“We’ve lost our story, our message,” he added. “We were never great at talking about what our civic ideals mean in practice, but we stopped trying after the Cold War. A vacuum opened up and demagogues stepped right in. We need that story now.”
Woodard addressed the audience in a presentation paired with Hal Brands, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who discussed the foreign policy implications of dismantling the post-World War II democratic alliances. Public broadcasting host David Brancaccio then held an on-stage conversation with the presenters and moderated questions from the audience.
This year’s Camden Conference, held February 21-23, was entitled Democracy Under Threat: A Global Perspective and was keynoted by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa. All presentations at the conference are available for livestream on their website.
In his presentation, Woodard discussed the structural weaknesses the U.S. inherited from the colonial era, how the federation has found itself in danger of democratic collapse, and the critical need for a rebooted national narrative tied to the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the goal of an initiative Nationhood Lab had just completed, the results of which were released Mar. 12. Woodard also participated in a discussion with New York University professor emeritus David Elcott on the relationship between populist nationalism and religion.
Woodard’s presentations were later broadcast in their entirety on Maine Public radio’s Speaking in Maine program, which reaches a statewide audience there.
The Camden Conference, founded in 1987, brings “the best and the brightest minds to Maine ” to discuss key issues in foreign affairs at their annual conference. Over 500 speakers from six continents have participated to date, including National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and General Anthony Zinni.
Nationhood Lab, based at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, is an interdisciplinary research, writing, testing and dissemination project focused on counteracting the authoritarian threat to American democracy and the centrifugal forces threatening the federation’s stability. The project delivers more effective tools with which to describe and defend the American liberal democratic tradition and better understand the forces undermining it.
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