Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. We are a country divided by alternative facts, fake news, conspiracy theories, and “cancel culture”—reaching us from as far away as Russia and as close as our cellphones.

What Rauch calls “the Constitution of Knowledge” is not written down or legally enforced but governs how we understand and discover truth and resembles the U.S. Constitution in many ways. Both constitutions set up norms and institutions that define liberal communities; both foster unequaled freedom, well-being, and social peace; both use checks and balances to channel ambition and force compromise; both impose burdensome responsibilities as well as protecting rights; both limit the sway of demagogues, extremists, and opportunists; and both, as a result, are constant targets of evasion and attack.

Please join Caleb O. Brown, director of multimedia at the Cato Institute, for a thought-provoking online conversation with Jonathan Rauch, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on his newly released book, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth—an ambitious dive into how to think about the norms and institutions that keep us collectively tethered to reality and about attacks on our shared understanding of the world.