Lines Crossed: The U.S. as an Authoritarian State

Featuring Lucan Way and Tanya Greene

Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Time: 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM (EST)
Location: Centre for Social Innovation (192 Spadina Ave., Toronto)

The Canadian International Council’s Toronto Branch is pleased to invite you to a timely panel discussion exploring the evidence that the U.S. has crossed over from a democratic system of government to an authoritarian state. This event will take place on Tuesday, June 24, from 5:00 to 6:00 PM, followed by a networking reception, at the Centre for Social Innovation on Spadina Ave.

Over recent weeks and months, the world has watched as the United States has increasingly chipped away at the democratic institutions and checks-and-balances which have consistently underpinned Washington’s international standing and role as a leader of the democratic world. Defying court orders, ruling by executive decree over Congressional due process, and now deploying the National Guard to suppress protests in Los Angeles, the second Trump administration has arguably accelerated the country’s shift away from the democratic norms which traditionally defined the U.S. around the world. Over the weekend, Washington witnessed the latest display of authoritarian state tendencies with a mass military parade to commemorate the President’s own birthday.

Against this backdrop, join us at this CIC Toronto panel to hear from leading authorities on the subject of authoritarian regimes and their applicable examples for the current situation in the U.S.  By way of background, Lucan Way from the University of Toronto recently co-authored a New York Times op ed posing this argument, and Tanya Greene from Human Rights Watch, based in New York City, is a career human rights activist deeply involved in the effort to try to reverse some of the repressive measures adopted by the U.S. government.

To register, please follow this link.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Tanya Greene, Director, US Program, Human Rights Watch
Based in New York City, Tanya Greene leads Human Rights Watch’s team focused on exposing and addressing human rights violations in the United States. Ms. Greene is an attorney with over 25 years of experience in advocacy, policy reform, community organizing, partnerships, and litigation aimed at challenging and dismantling racist structures and systems in the US criminal legal system and beyond. As a Black woman from a working-class family, including an immigrant parent, Ms. Greene uniquely understands the challenges of race and class and the vital importance of individual and community empowerment to achieve change. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Ms. Greene provided direct representation to state and federal indigent capital clients across the country. Ms. Greene also spent five years as the inaugural national ACLU criminal justice Advocacy and Policy Counsel focused on death penalty, indigent defense, and juvenile justice policy reform issues; her work contributed to death penalty repeal in a number of states.

Lucan Way, Distinguished Professor of Democracy, University of Toronto
Lucan Ahmad Way is the Distinguished Professor of Democracy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on global patterns of democracy and dictatorship.  His most recent book (with Steven Levitsky), Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism provides a comparative historical explanation for the extraordinary durability of autocracies (China, Cuba, USSR) born of violent social revolution. His first book, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Steven Levitsky), was published in 2010. Way’s work on competitive authoritarianism has been cited thousands of times and helped stimulate new and wide-ranging research into the dynamics of hybrid democratic-authoritarian rule. He is Co-Director of the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine and is Co-Chair of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Democracy. He received his BA from Harvard College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and he has held fellowships at Harvard University (Harvard Academy and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies), and the University of Notre Dame (Kellogg Fellowship).

Ben Rowswell, Vice President, CIC Toronto; Founder, Circle for Democratic Solidarity
Ben Rowswell is the Vice President of the Canadian International Council’s Toronto Branch. In 2023, Ben founded the Circle for Democratic Solidarity, a movement of citizens to adapt best practices from other democracies to improve Canada’s own. This organization emerged from a three-year project by the Canadian International Council called Renewing Our Democratic Alliance, when Ben served as President and Research Director of the CIC. Prior to this Ben served as Canada’s Ambassador to Venezuela, Deputy Ambassador to Afghanistan and Representative of Canada in Kandahar. He founded the Democracy Unit at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and wrote the government’s 2008 policy on democracy promotion prior to serving as international affairs advisor to the Prime Minister in the Privy Council Office.