What is Engaged Pluralism?

In this podcast episode of “What is Engaged Pluralism Podcast,” Kimberly Williams Brown of Vassar College Executive Director of The Steady State, Steven Cash, as he discusses an earlier disrupted talk at the college. Cash urges civic engagement, dialogue, and constitutional literacy as he warns that rising political polarization and attempts to control speech, whether by protesters or government, reflect broader risks to pluralism and democratic norms.

Please also see a timestamped, AI-generated conversational transcript of this episode here.

Steven A. Cash served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office before joining the CIA in 1994 as Assistant General counsel and subsequently serving as an intelligence officer in the Directorate of Operations. In 2001 he joined the Senate Select committee on Intelligence as Counsel and designee-staffer to Senator Diane Feinstein). He later served as a senior staffer in the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security and the Department of Energy. In the private sector he has advised on national security, counterintelligence, and technology policy and served on the Biological Sciences Experts Group under the Director of National Intelligence. Mr. Cash is currently the Executive Director of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.