David Smilde is the Charles A and Leo M Favrot Professor of Human Relations and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Tulane University. He is teaching a seminar called Democratic Erosion and Resilience based on the DEC curriculum. David is a cultural sociologist who studies illiberal ideologies and how they impact democracy, governance, violence and everyday life. From 2011 to 2024 he was Senior Fellow for Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). From 2020-2022 he participated in the Wilson Center for Scholars Venezuela Working Group and is currently a member of the Atlantic Council’s Venezuela Solutions Group. For WOLA he created and curated the “Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights” blog, and testified in a hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate. He has published opinion articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy and El País.