The website Big Think declared August “the month of thinking dangerously,” and each day it has posted a “dangerous idea” from experts in a range of fields. On August 26, that expert was Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law. His provocative proposal, which he explains on video: abolish primary elections. They are, he says, “one of the causes that contribute to the extreme polarization of politics today.” Pildes is a pioneering scholar in the law of democracy, an area in which NYU Law has been a leader. His proposal joins other dangerous ideas on Big Think, including physicist Steven Hawking’s call for humans to colonize space to avoid extinction, and economist Gary Becker’s suggestion that the U.S. sell American citizenship.
Posted August 30, 2010