Episode 2019: Ismar Volic explains how mathematics can save American democracy from the Trump/Biden gerontocratic duopoly

Andrew Keen (0:03)

Hi, this is Andrew, and this is Keen On. The day, now.tv chat show with some of the world's leading thinkers and writers.

Hello, everybody. It is April 1st, Monday, 2024

As always, I'm talking to you from the west coast of the United States, although the jokes in America aren't always very funny. A lot of people are fearful of the country's descent into civil war. We've talked a lot about that in the future.

Next week, Alex Garland, a UK filmmaker, his new movie Civil War is coming out, a dystopia, a warning about how America may descend into civil war. In a couple of months, we're also featuring a book by the former BBC correspondent in Washington DC, Nick Bryant, one of the most respected foreign correspondents entitled The Forever War, America's unending conflict with itself. We've done many shows, of course, on America's potential descent into civil war and the breakdown of American democracy. One man all too familiar with civil war is my guest on the show, Ismar Volic. He's a professor of math at Wellesley College and a Bosnian emigre, someone who left Bosnia as it was experiencing civil war and made his life in America. He has a new book out on perhaps the threat of civil war or certainly violence and ways of improving democracy in America called Making Democracy Count. Ismar is joining us from his office in Wellesley, just outside Boston, Massachusetts. Ismar, you were a young boy in Bosnia in the years before the Bosnian civil war or the Yugoslav civil war, but there's some features of what's happening in America in 2024 Do they remind you of that period in Bosnia and Yugoslavia?

Ismar Volic (2:19)

Absolutely. First, thank you for having me on.

It really is an honor and a pleasure. But yes, the indiscriminate use of populism, bordering nationalism, sort of election, questionable in election practices, all of that is very reminiscent of what was happening in the former Yugoslavia in the early 90s. Now I was 16 and 17 when this was happening. And all I cared about was the band I was playing in and like chasing girls and stuff. So I didn't really notice much that was going on around me. But now, looking back and sort of thinking on those days, unfortunately, the parallels are many and scary between Bosnia that descended into the most horrible war that Europe had seen since World War II.

And some of the features of our political system today.

Andrew Keen (3:23)

Isma, a few months ago, we had one of your Bosnian compatriots, Aleksandar Heman, on the show. Perhaps Bosnia's best known writer, novelist, certainly best known in the United States. He has a new book out.

The World And All That It Holds is his own love story, I think, to Sarajevo. Sarajevo is a kind of Jerusalem. I'm not sure if you've read the book. It's a wonderful book.

Heeman's own story in some ways is like yours. He happened to find himself in America during the Civil War. Tell me a little bit about your story. How did you get to America?

Ismar Volic (3:58)

Right. And it's funny that you mention. Sasha is a good friend. I know him well. We were both active as sort of professional academic diaspora. We're active in Bosnia and tried to improve that frail state.

But like him, I found myself in the US.

In the summer of 91, I came to visit an uncle who lived here in Boston, and it was meant to be a two-month stay. But during those two months, the war in Croatia had already started. Croatia had seceded, and Serbia had attacked it, and Slovenia, a similar thing happened, although the situation in Croatia was more serious. And Bosnia was still, things were working in Bosnia, but my mom had this foresight session. She said on the phone, you know, you might want to try to stay there, finish your senior year of high school in Boston, just kind of make it one year, see what happens, see where things go. And it turns out-

Andrew Keen (4:59)

Now you're at Somerville High School, right?

Ismar Volic (5:02)

That's right, that's Somerville High School, right? Yeah, exactly, that's my high school. And here I'm 33 years later.

You know, I enrolled in high school. But as I was graduating, April of 92, May of 92 is when the war started in Bosnia. Lasted for three and a half years. And, you know, I stayed here in the meantime.

Andrew Keen (5:25)

Ismar, you came to America as a refugee. You, I guess in a sense, fled the war in Bosnia.

In the early 90s, Bill Clinton was president. America seemed prosperous on lots of levels. How has America, for you as an immigrant, someone who has in some ways embraced America and in some ways is critical of it, how has it changed in the 30 plus years that you've lived in this country?