The Words That Made Us
Revisit key constitutional questions through the lens of history and law.
July 5–8, 2022
Washington, DC
For the third week of the Political Studies Program, fellows 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.
Fellows will choose between seminars on the American Founding and on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
Darren Staloff on the Constitutionalism of John Adams
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 36 fellows will be selected.
Darren Staloff is a retired Professor of History from the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of CUNY. Professor Staloff has published numerous papers and reviews on the subject of early American history.
Darren Staloff is a retired Professor of History from the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of CUNY.
Professor Staloff has published numerous papers and reviews on the subject of early American history and is the author of The Making of an American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts (1998) and Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding (2005).
He has recorded dozens of audio and video tapes (nationally distributed) on U.S. and world history and major philosophers. He has received many fellowships, including The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University as well as an NEH grant and a post-doctoral fellowship from the Omahundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. He earned his B.A. from Columbia College and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Jenna Silber Storey is a senior fellow in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the co-author of a book with Benjamin Storey: Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment.
Jenna Silber Storey is a senior fellow in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she concentrates on political philosophy, civil society, classical schools, and higher education. She is also the co-organizer of a conference series on the future of the American university. Dr. Storey is concurrently a research professor at Furman University, where she was previously assistant professor in politics and international affairs and the executive director of the Tocqueville Program. For the 2022–23 academic year, Dr. Storey is also an alumni-in-residence at the University of Chicago.
In addition to Furman University, Dr. Storey has taught at the University of Chicago; the Buckley Program at Yale University; the Hertog Summer Studies Program in Washington, DC; and the Tikvah Fund in Princeton, New Jersey. Earlier she worked as executive assistant to the superintendent for the Boston University–Chelsea Schools partnership. She served as a board member of Veritas Preparatory School in Greenville, South Carolina, from 2019 to 2021.
Dr. Storey is the coauthor, with her husband, Benjamin Storey, of Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment (Princeton University Press, 2021). Together, the Storeys are working on a book titled The Art of Choosing: How Liberal Education Should Prepare You for Life.
Readings:
Readings:
Readings:
Readings:
9:30 AM – 10:30 AM ET Session I: Non-Liberal Republics
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM ET Theoretical Underpinnings of the American Republic
Discussion Questions:
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
Akhil Reed Amar
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. He is Yale’s only currently active professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service. His latest and most ambitious book, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. He has recently launched a weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution.
Adam J. White
Adam J. White is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on American constitutionalism. Concurrently, he codirects the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.
Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his work is focused on American political thought and history, with a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in the 20th century.
Bryan Garsten
Bryan Garsten is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He writes on questions about political rhetoric and deliberation, the meaning of representative government, the relationship of politics and religion, and the place of emotions in political life.
Amy A. Kass
Amy Apfel Kass (1940 – 2015) was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Senior Lecturer Emerita in the humanities at the University of Chicago, and coeditor of What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. She was an award-winning teacher of classic texts.
Leon R. Kass
Leon R. Kass, M.D., is the Madden-Jewett Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Harding Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. From 2001 to 2005, he was chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Greg Weiner
Greg Weiner is President of Assumption University and founding director of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Center for Scholarship and Statesmanship. He is the author of American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln and the Politics of Prudence.