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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. In the 2024 presidential campaign, Democrats' warnings

that American democracy was in jeopardy if Donald Trump was elected failed to persuade a

majority of voters. Our guest, Stephen

Levitsky says there's plenty of reason to worry about our democracy now. Levitsky isn't a

politician or political pundit. He's a Harvard professor of government who spent much of his

career studying democracy and dictatorship and how healthy democracies can slide into authoritarianism.

He was last on fresh air to talk about the book he co-authored with Daniel Zibblatt titled

How Democracies Die. In a new article for the journal Foreign Affairs, Levitsky and co-author,

Lucan A. Way write, quote,

U.S. democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration in the sense

that it will cease to meet standard criteria for a liberal democracy, full adult suffrage,

free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties, unquote.

We've invited Levitsky here to explain the threats he sees to democracy

and to talk about dramatic developments in the Trump administration's confrontation with Harvard University.

Stephen Levitsky is director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard.

He's also senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation

and a senior democracy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Besides the book,

...