The Writings of Booker T. Washington
Study the moral vision & subtle statesmanship of Booker T. Washington.
The third week of Political Studies will engage key texts that have helped shape the political idea—and political ideals—of America.
The first section will explore the political significance of the year 1776 through a remarkable set of contributions to political theory: books by Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith, pamphlets by Thomas Paine and Richard Price, poems by Phillis Wheatley—and, of course, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.
The second section will engage the ideas of modern liberal democracy, exploring how the American system has sought to balance the deepest themes of ancient political thought against the imperatives of individual freedom, security, and economic progress that are so central to modern liberal thought.
Ryan Hanley on Adam Smith
This course is part of our residential Political Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet prominent men and women in public life over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 32 fellows will be selected.
Faculty
Ryan P. Hanley
Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His research in the history of political philosophy focuses on the Enlightenment. He is the author of Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life and Love’s Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity.
Ryan P. Hanley
Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. Previously, he was the Mellon Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. His research in the history of political philosophy focuses on the Enlightenment.
He is the author of Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life (Princeton University Press, 2019), Love’s Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2009). His edited volumes include Adam Smith: His Life, Thought, and Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2016), the Penguin Classics edition of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (Penguin, 2010), and with Darrin M. McMahon, The Enlightenment: Critical Concepts in History, 5 vols. (Routledge, 2010).
His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, European Journal of Political Theory, Review of Politics, Social Philosophy & Policy, History of Political Thought, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Revue internationale de philosophie, and Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie.
Professor Hanley received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Prior to Marquette, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center.
Wilfred M. McClay
Wilfred M. McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. His book, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, received the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history.
Wilfred M. McClay
Wilfred M. McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. Before coming to Hillsdale in the fall of 2021, he was the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the Director of the Center for the History of Liberty.
His book, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, received the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books is The Student’s Guide to U.S. History, Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America, Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America, and Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.
He served for eleven years on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently is a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semiquincentennial, which has been charged with planning the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026.
He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, and served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Rome. He is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
The Spirit of 1776
Session I: Paine
Readings:
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Introduction and Parts 1–4 (pp. 1–79)
Session II: Price
Readings:
- Richard Price, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Sections 1–4 (pp. 1–65)
Session III: Gibbon
Readings:
- Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Preface, Ch. 1–3 (pp. v–viii and 1–84)
Session IV: Smith
Readings:
- Smith, Wealth of Nations, Introduction and Plan, Book 1, Ch. 1–2 (pp. 1–20), Book 4, Ch. 7, Part 3 (pp. 190–255)
Session V: Wheatley, Cowley, & Jefferson
Readings:
- Phillis Wheatley, “To His Excellency, George Washington” and “Liberty and Peace”
- Declaration of Independence (rough drafts and final draft)
- Hannah Cowley, The Runaway
