Women in Leadership: Resistance and Resilience

*IN-PERSON EVENT ONLY*

Join us at 7pm (ET) on March 25th for “Women in Leadership: Resistance and Resilience.” This public dialogue will feature Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan (MN), a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and the country’s highest ranking Native woman elected to executive office, and Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, author of the forthcoming book Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. It promises to be a rich conversation focused on resisting the current authoritarian/(white) patriarchal political trends with the insights women have earned, and what can be done to challenge and withstand the politics of domination currently wreaking havoc in our communities. The event will be held in person at Georgetown University.

Peggy Flanagan is Minnesota’s 50th Lieutenant Governor, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and currently the country’s highest ranking Native woman elected to executive office. At the center of all her work is making progress for children, working families, communities of color and Indigenous communities, and Minnesotans who have historically been underserved and underrepresented.

As Lieutenant Governor, Peggy co-chairs the work of the Young Women’s Initiative to center the voices of young women in the work of state government. She also delivered the largest tax cut in Minnesota history; made transformative investments in education, small businesses, and child care; and made the state a nation leader in agriculture innovation. She also championed the issues that most impact our children and families, including paid family and medical leave, a historic billion-dollar investment in housing, and free school meals.

Peggy previously served on the Minneapolis School Board and in the Minnesota House. She previously served on the board of Sojourners, under the leadership of Jim Wallis. As executive director of Children's Defense Fund--Minnesota, she led a coalition that raised the state's minimum wage. She also worked at Wellstone Action, the organization founded to carry on the work of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, for nearly a decade. As one of the original trainers of Wellstone Action’s signature program Camp Wellstone, she trained thousands of organizers, elected officials, and candidates – including Minnesota's current governor, Tim Walz.

Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a Professor in the School of Public Affairs and in the School of Education at the American University in Washington, DC, where she is also the founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). She is a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Entrepreneur and recently served as the inaugural creative lead for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s residency program on social cohesion in Berlin, Germany. Dr. Miller-Idriss regularly testifies before the U.S. Congress and briefs policy, security, education and intelligence agencies in the U.S., the United Nations, and other countries on trends in domestic violent extremism and strategies for prevention and disengagement. She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of seven books, including Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton University Press, forthcoming in 2025) and Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (Princeton University Press, 2022) and is at work on a new co-authored book (with Pasha Dashtgard) reporting on research from her lab, A School Without Hate: Evidence from Education Interventions (under contract, Harvard Education Press). Dr. Miller-Idriss writes frequently for mainstream audiences, as an opinion columnist for MSNBC and in other recent by-lines in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Politico, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and more.

Host or Publisher Center on Faith and Justice, Georgetown University