Chris Hayes: America After Meritocracy July 11, 2012

MSNBC’s rising star Chris Hayes will offer a novel answer to what led America into the “Fail Decade,” his term for the recent era plagued by the failure of Congress, Wall Street and even Major League Baseball. An expert on political culture and political economy, Hayes will mix deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding while offering a powerful argument that traces the roots of our present crisis and mistrust of authority to an unlikely source: meritocracy. Since the 1960s, meritocracy has elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power. Hayes will argue that the ascension of this group led to more extreme social distance within American society and spawned a new American elite more prone to failure and corruption than any before it. He will explain how this brought us to today’s crisis of authority as the public refuses to trust government, Wall Street, or the media.

Chris Hayes is Editor at Large of The Nation and host of “Up w/ Chris Hayes” on MSNBC. Prior to hosting his own show, Hayes was a frequent guest and fill-in host on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” He was a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics from 2010 to 2011, after spending three years as a Bernard Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. From 2005 to 2006, Hayes was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times, a liberal monthly magazine of which he is now a Senior Editor. Hayes has been writing about political culture and political economy since 2002, focusing on issues central to the liberal community, and his essays, articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, The Guardian, and The Chicago Reader.

CONTACT: Riki Rafner, Media and Public Relations Director, 415.597.6712; Media interested in attending should please RSVP to rrafner@commonwealthclub.org and please bring business card to event

Official Website: http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2012-07-11/chris-hayes-america-after-meritocracy