Following presentations by political scientists Susan Stokes (The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies) and Jeffrey Winters (The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy), the third installment of the Stone Program's mini-series on inequality and democracy features political scientist Taeku Lee discussing his new book co-authored with Pepper Culpepper, Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy.
About the book: Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee draw on a decade of research on policymaking and public opinion to show us how scandals can ignite a public with few political outlets for their discontent. Scandals don't simply dominate news cycles: they can provoke us to demand better policy, spurring governments to adopt rules that protect us from massive corporations run amok. Today it is giant companies, not governments, who run the world. They launch rockets into space, control satellite communication and develop era-defining AI technologies. But around the globe, these corporate titans are facing increasing public hostility. Tech giants are seen as promoting misinformation, undermining democracy and violating our privacy. Big banks, reeling since the financial crisis of 2008, continue to be racked with major scandals. Drawing on real-life examples such as the powdered milk scandal that rocked France, the VW scandal in Germany, the Goldman Sachs scandal in the United States, Cambridge Analytica in Britain and Samsung in South Korea - the authors show that these scandals are not just symptoms of a careless corporate elite, they are opportunities for real political change. Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee reveal how the shared anger of citizens can be channelled into a backlash that has the potential to reinvigorate our failing democracies. One corporate scandal at a time.
Taeku Lee is Bae Family Professor of Government and Faculty Dean of Dunster House at Harvard University. Lee has researched and written extensively on racial and ethnic politics, public opinion and political behavior, identity and inequality, and deliberative and participatory democracy. He recently published Race and Inequality in America (Cambridge University Press, 2025, with Zoltan Hajnal and Vincent Hutchings) and Billionaire Backlash (Bloomsbury, 2026, with Pepper Culpepper). Lee served as President of the American Political Science Association and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for two decades. Lee is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the 2024 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. He serves on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the Board of Overseers of the American National Election Studies. He previously served on the National Advisory Committee for the U.S. Census Bureau and the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey and has held honorary or visiting appointments at Yale, Oxford, the European University Institute, and the Brookings Institution. Born in Masan, Korea, Lee spent his childhood years in rural Malaysia, lower Manhattan, and suburban Michigan. He is a proud graduate of K-12 public schools, the University of Michigan, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. In his free time, he is a crossword enthusiast, tennis junkie, and a diehard Michigan Wolverine, Golden State Warrior and Tottenham Hotspur fan.
Other talks in the Stone Program's Spring 2026 mini-series on inequality and democracy:
Due to building access restrictions, if you do not have a Harvard ID and wish to attend, you must email inequality@hks.harvard.edu to receive permission.