Roundtable on the 2024 U.S. Election

The 2024 US election has the potential to fundamentally alter domestic and global politics. Regardless of who wins, it will be highly useful for the Annual Meeting to feature a session, as in years past, in which a diverse group of religion scholars can analyze the election from multiple perspectives. This session follows the successful many-unit roundtables on the US elections in 2016 and 2020. In 2016, the Liberation Theologies unit took led organizing an "emergency session" in the aftermath of the election, while in 2020 the Class, Religion, and Theology unit organized the roundtable, approved by the PC as a "special session," in which 17 units participated. Both of these sessions had strong attendance and addressed issues that were being widely discussed among the AAR’s members, both in our capacities as members of society and as public intellectuals. We will be using the same structure as in 2020, which was highly effective in fostering interaction among a large group of panelists: • Each participating unit will designate one scholar for this roundtable, who can speak from/to that unit's perspective/focus area/approach. Units have been asked to begin identifying an appropriate scholar to designate pending approval of the session by the PC. That way, we're not asking co-chairs to do the work of fully securing a panelist until we know the PC has approved the session. (Note: Dr. Danner, listed in PAPERS as this session’s panelist, will not necessarily be on the panel; we listed her because PAPERS requires at least one panelist be named in order to submit a roundtable proposal.) • This two-hour session will be broken up into 4 half-hour segments. Each panelist will be one of the “lead commenters” for one of the half-hour segments, with the panelists divided equally among the 4 segments. Lead commenters will offer brief 2-minute opening comments for their segment, after which the floor is open to other panelists. This allows for key points to shape each segment while also leave about 20 minutes for conversation among panelists. • Each segment will have a "focus question." The focus questions will be crafted by the moderator shortly after the election to highlight key themes emerging from the election results. They will then be circulated to the panelists, who will indicate their 1st and 2nd preference for the question they wish to be a lead commenter on. Panelists are asked to think about the most important point they want to make about the election and which question(s) it most closely relates to. This creates some coherence for each segment while also allowing for panelists to highlight whatever they think is most crucial. • The roundtable will be moderated by Jeremy Posadas, who moderated the 2020 roundtable and received high marks from many panelists and audience members for his structuring of the panel and kind-yet-firm moderation, ensuring that everyone got to contribute. This year, Class, Religion, and Theology has invited 22 other units to participate; in addition to nearly all the units that participated in 2020, we have invited 3 units with expertise in Israel/Palestine, as discussed below. This may strike PC members as an excessive number of units to invite, but, as in 2020, such a large invitation list aims to advance three crucial goals. First, including 8-9 units that focus on race and gender (along with Class, Religion, and Theology’s focus on class) promotes a demographically diverse range of perspectives on the election — which is important both for AAR’s commitment to diversity and because race, gender, and class are central social forces shaping US elections. Second, including 7-8 units that focus or are closely connected to religion and political issues allows for methodological / field diversity among the panel. The AAR contains many useful approaches for making sense of religion and politics, which the roundtable brings into conversation. Third, showing that it is possible for such a large number of units to create an effective session together challenges the silo effect and invites AAR members and unit leaders to imagine new ways of collaborating. This pushes back against the proliferation/fragmentation problem that the PC has rightly begun to address in recent years. Here are the invited units that have confirmed they would like to participate: • Class, Religion, and Theology (lead unit) • Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society • Religions in the Latina/o Americas • Asian North American Religion, Culture, and Society • Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society • Women and Religion • Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection • Queer Studies in Religion • Evangelical Studies • Liberation Theologies • Study of Judaism • Contemporary Islam • Theological, Ethical, and Pedagogical Approaches to Israel/Palestine Seminar (see below) • Religion and Politics • Political Theology • Religions, Social Conflict, and Peace • Law, Religion, and Culture • Religion and Human Rights • Religion, Media, and Culture We are still waiting for confirmation from the Black Theology and Religion and Migration units. The Afro-American Religious History unit has declined the invitation due to its other session commitments. (In setting the final list of panelists, however, we will do all we can to ensure that there are multiple African American voices on the panel.) Given the significant role the war in Gaza is playing and will continue to play in the US election, it seems absolutely necessary to include in this roundtable experts who can thoughtfully comment on Israel/Palestine. It is, of course, inappropriate to conflate Judaism with Israel or Islam with Palestine, and the war is not best construed as a religious war. But within the structure of AAR units, the Study of Judaism unit and the Contemporary Islam unit are the units best positioned to identify scholars with the requisite expertise. (The Contemporary Islam unit was invited because, among the Islam-focused units, its mission/focus are most clearly relevant to the election.) It is unclear whether seminars are allowed to co-sponsor a session, so we are requesting that the Theological, Ethical, and Pedagogical Approaches to Israel/Palestine Seminar be allowed co-sponsor this one, given their highly relevant focus; even if they can’t be co-sponsors, we would still like them to designate one of the panelists.