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Francis Fukuyama

Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Search every verified Francis Fukuyama interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Francis Fukuyama, senior fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been promoting his memoir "In the Realm of the Last Man" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026) through a series of interviews and appearances. In these discussions, he revisited arguments from his 1992 book "The End of History and the Last Man," stating that his original thesis was often misunderstood as triumphalist and that he had warned about weaknesses in liberal democracy. He discussed the concept of thymos, which he described as the human desire for recognition, and argued that work provides dignity and that AI-driven visions of reduced work may not satisfy this need. Fukuyama also commented on current political events. He criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio's October 7 speech in Athens, saying Rubio's use of the concept of thymos disregarded its potential to lead to domination and tyranny. He drew parallels between the Alternative for Germany party's support base and Donald Trump's voters, attributing both to a perceived lack of respect rather than material deprivation. He expressed views on the state of liberal democracy, saying established parties had become too comfortable and that courts and elections serve as checks on executive power. He also discussed the role of India in global geopolitics and the challenges facing democratic governance.

Recent appearances

  • Francis Fukuyama's History

    October 14, 2026 · 📺 WNYC

    Francis Fukuyama, senior fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, former State Department official and the author of The End of History and the Last Man (https://www.simonandschuster.com/book...) (Free Press, 1992) and his latest, In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir (https://us.macmillan.com/books/978037...) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026), tells his story and how it intersected with events and his political beliefs. Photo: Francis Fukuyama, author and political scientist, poses for a portrait during an interview at the Javeriana University of…

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  • Rubio is cribbing from my book #francisfukuyama

    October 12, 2026 · 📺 Frankly Fukuyama

    In a speech on Oct. 7 in Athens, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a speech arguing that the essence of Western civilzation was thymos, a Greek word for spiritedness or pride that denotes the human desire for recognition. He uses this word as if thymos was an unambiguously positive quality, disregarding the fact that it is at the root of dictatorship, tyranny, and domination. I speak about this both in my 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, as well as in my just published memoir In the Realm of the Last Man: https://www.amazon.com/Realm-Last-Man... For the blog post on which…

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  • The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: Francis Fukuyama Explains What Went Wrong | #TheHardFacts

    October 09, 2026 · 📺 CNN-News18

    Is liberal democracy facing a crisis of legitimacy? Why are voters losing faith in established political parties, and what is driving the global rise of populism? In this candid conversation, Professor Francis Fukuyama, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute, examines the widening divide between political elites and ordinary citizens. He argues that established parties have become too comfortable, failing to deliver the results and recognition people expect. Fukuyama, renowned for The End of History and the Last Man, explores the importance of dignity, identity, belo…

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  • The AfD in Germany and the equality of respect #francisfukuyama

    October 06, 2026 · 📺 Frankly Fukuyama

    The Alternative for Germany is a right-wing populist party which recently did well in two states in Eastern Germany. Support for the AfD is better explained by a perceived lack of respect rather than a lack of material support or welfare state benefits. In that respect its social base is similar to Donald Trump's MAGA base. See the Persuasion blog post on which this video is based: https://open.substack.com/pub/persuas... Frankly Fukuyama is the YouTube channel of Francis Fukuyama, Senior Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

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  • What Francis Fukuyama Is Seeing at ‘The End of History’ | Odd Lots

    September 17, 2026 · 📺 Bloomberg Podcasts

    Francis Fukuyama's essay “The End of History?” was published in the summer of 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. His argument — that liberal democracy would not only defeat communism, but that its partisans might miss the “courage, imagination, and idealism” that defined the ideological battle — lives on as one of the most cited pieces of political theory in the last three decades. In his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man, he revisits “The End of History?” and talks to us about how his argument has evolved in a world now defined by the rapid development of AI and by the many…

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  • Why I Can’t Stop Thinking About ‘The End of History’ | The Ezra Klein Show

    September 11, 2026 · 📺 The Ezra Klein Show and 2 more

    Francis Fukuyama's “The End of History and the Last Man” is one of the most insightful books for understanding the strangeness and instability of this political moment. Fukuyama wrote his landmark book more than 30 years ago, and it’s typically remembered as a triumphalist argument, heralding the permanent victory of liberal democracy at the end of the Cold War. But that’s not quite right. Fukuyama also talked about the serious weaknesses he saw in liberal democracy — how it may not fully satisfy the human soul — and his warnings feel very prescient now. So I wanted to have Fukuyama on the…

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  • Francis Fukuyama: What the AI Hypists Miss - Work, Dignity, and American AI Policy

    September 02, 2026 · 📺 Interintellect

    Many arguments about AI get stuck on jobs, and even there mostly about how many disappear or how much productivity rises. Francis Fukuyama’s work points to a harder question: work is one of the ways a society distributes dignity and status, which means that changes in work can change our identity. Fukuyama has warned against assuming a simple job-destruction story. In his essay “AI, Technology, and Equality,” he argues that generative AI could widen opportunity by helping people poorly served by education do useful work in an information economy. His work on identity, political order, and tec…

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  • The Eras of Francis Fukuyama: How States Form

    August 15, 2026 · 📺 Persuasion

    Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is In the Realm of the Last Man. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column at Persuasion. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss why Fukuyama initially supported the Iraq War and what changed his mind, how the neoconservative movement’s experience of Eastern Europe shaped its disastrous assumptions about the Middle East, and what his break with former colleagues cost him personally and professionally. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good…

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  • 669. Liberalism and Discontent: Exploring Modern Democracy with Francis Fukuyama

    July 21, 2026 · 📺 unSILOed Podcast with Greg LaBlanc

    Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science. In addition he is the author of several books. His most recent titles are Liberalism and Its Discontents, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, and the upcoming In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir. Greg and…

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  • Why Nothing Works: Fukuyama and Dunkelman on the Abundance Paradox

    April 21, 2026 · 📺 Stanford Law School

    Sponsored by the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law April 7, 2026 Stanford Law School In an era of unprecedented material wealth and technological capability, why do our institutions seem increasingly incapable of delivering basic services? Why does it take a decade to build a train station, or years to acquire permits for housing construction? Watch renowned political scientist Francis Fukuyama and author Marc Dunkelman have an illuminating conversation exploring one of the defining puzzles of our time: the growing gap between our society’s abundant resources and our declining ability to get…

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  • Francis Fukuyama: The End of History Was Never What You Think

    April 16, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    Sam Harris speaks with Francis Fukuyama about liberal democracy, American politics, and global order. They discuss the misunderstood thesis of "The End of History," how conservatism has mutated into ethno-nationalism, the self-defeating extremes of both identity politics and neoliberalism, the damage of Trump's second term, the war in Iran, the future of Israel, antisemitism on the left and right, and other topics. Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's…

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  • Francis Fukuyama discusses the unintended consequences of an 'America First' policy

    July 22, 2025 · 📺 CNBC International Live

    Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University and Author of The End of History and the Last Man sees a longer-term trend of old liberal world order ideas being supplanted by those of national self-interest.

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“If you look at the progress of democracy or of any other political institution, it's not linear. You have times when it advances and times when it goes into reverse. If you think about the 20th century, we had a huge backlash in the 1930s with the rise of Stalinism and fascism, and another one during the energy crisis in the 1970s when many people thought that democracy was on its last legs. So I don't take the curre”

“I wrote about Donald Trump back in 1992 in The End of History and the Last Man. I was looking for positive outlets for megalothumia and I argued that a capitalist economy would bleed off the desire for dominance and channel it into business. This is what I was thinking that Donald Trump was up to. Little did I realize that some decades later, Donald Trump would not be content with being rich, but would want political”

“Secretary Rubio is correct that the striving to be better than other people is the source of all human excellences in the arts, in sports, in the economy or in politics. But the will to be better than other people can lead to domination, tyranny and unspeakable crimes. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill were clearly driven by megalothumia. But so were Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Thumos thus repr”

“Well, one important safeguard has been the court system because the courts have overturned a lot of Donald Trump's executive orders. And the Supreme Court, even though it's a conservative court, have stopped him on certain important issues like tariffs and his attempt to overturn birthright citizenship. But, the most important check on his power is an election. We're going to have an election in about a month, a midt”

“I don't think that's going to make people happy in the end. I mean, the same problem with universal basic income. And the reason for this has to do with this concept of thumos. So megalothymia media comes from the Greek word thumos, which is spiritedness or pride that in addition to material needs, human beings want to be recognized for their basic human dignity. And quite frankly, a lot of our dignity comes from the”

“Well, I think a liberal democracy is based on having a competent state that is limited both by a rule of law and by elections. And China has the competent state, very competent, but it doesn't have either rule of law or elections and therefore the quality of governance there depends entirely on the quality of rulers. One of the things about Chinese civilization is that Confucianism embodies bureaucracy as one of its ”

Other executives at Stanford University

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  • Carolyn Bertozzi, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry

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