What can 130 leading Polish thinkers teach us about bridging deep ideological divides? Drawing on the bestselling volume Let’s Agree on Poland (OUP, 2025), Prof. Kisilowski explores how lawyers can mediate between liberalism and the New Right, and why reviving constitutionalism’s contractarian roots may offer one of the last viable frameworks for coexistence.

How can democracies survive polarization that corrodes even their strongest institutions? Let’s Agree on Poland (Oxford University Press, 2025) offers one bold answer. Born of an unprecedented collaboration among 130 Polish thinkers from left to right, the book presents a constitutional blueprint for coexistence in divided societies. Its North American launch will use the Polish case to spark a broader conversation about democracy’s future—from judicial independence to cultural conflict, from Europe to the United States. This is not merely the North American launch of the book, but an invitation to imagine institutions capable of holding democracy together.

On the eve of the U.S. elections, Let’s Agree on Poland joins The New School’s Transregional Center for Democratic Studies in New York for a conversation on how deeply polarized societies can find common ground. Drawing lessons from Poland’s democratic renewal after years of authoritarian rule, the event explores what a cross-partisan social contract might look like in times of political division.

Poland’s October 15 election stunned observers worldwide: a fragmented democratic opposition defeated the entrenched Law and Justice party in a deeply uneven race. In this talk, Professors Maciej Kisilowski and Anna Wojciuk examine how this democratic upset was possible—and what it reveals about rebuilding institutions, preventing authoritarian relapse, and forging a new social contract in polarized societies.