Vail Symposium | Conversations on Controversial Issues

In October 2020 in The Atlantic, David Brooks wrote “Social trust is a measure of the moral quality of a society—of whether the people and institutions in it are trustworthy, whether they keep their promises and work for the common good. When people in a church lose faith or trust in God, the church collapses. When people in a society lose faith or trust in their institutions and in each other, the nation collapses.”

This fireside-style discussion will explore the unique characteristics of the American experiment that depend on trust in our institutions, other epochs in American history that were riddled with distrust and how we recovered, and what we ought to do to rebuild this critical component of life in America.