Community outreach – both on-campus and to the community – has been an important part of the Simon Perry Center’s work. The Amicus Curiae Lecture Series on Constitutional Democracy, sponsored by the Simon Perry Center and supported in part by a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council, brings scholars from throughout the United States to Marshall to speak to various historical and contemporary issues related to the Constitution and to United States politics and government. The lectures are free and open to the public.
All Lectures Begin at 7 p.m. in the Brad D. Smith Foundation Hall of the Erickson Alumni Center
Upcoming Lectures
Thursday, August 29, 2024: Dr. Elisabeth Griffith, historian, and award-winning author of Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality (1920-2020), will deliver a lecture in celebration of Women’s Equality Day (co-sponsored by the Drinko Academy)
Tuesday, September 17, 2024: Dr. Denver Brunsman, historian at George Washington University and Mount Vernon and award-winning author, will deliver a lecture in celebration of U.S. Constitution and Citizenship Day (co-sponsored by the Drinko Academy)
Tuesday, November 19, 2024: Dr. Michael Neiberg, historian, award-winning author, and Chair of War Studies at the U.S. Army War College, will deliver a lecture on the impact of foreign conflicts on U.S. society and culture
Thursday, March 27, 2025: Margaret H. Lemos, Esquire, Duke Law professor, member of the Presidential Commission on the U.S. Supreme Court, and former law clerk to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
Thursday, April 17, 2025: Jared Fishman, Esquire, founder and executive director of the Justice Innovation Lab, former senior prosecutor for the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and author of Fire on the Levee: The Murder of Henry Glover and the Search for Justice After Hurricane Katrina
We would love for you to attend in person, but if you cannot, you can still see and hear the lectures via live-streaming at www.marshall.edu/it/livestream.
Links to Previous Lectures
April 11, 2024: Peter S. Canellos
John Marshall Harlan and the Power of Dissent
Peter S. Canellos is the author of The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero, which Publisher’s Weekly named as one of the top 20 nonfiction books of 2021. As managing editor for enterprise at POLITICO, he oversees the site’s magazine, investigative journalism, and major projects. He also has been POLITICO’s executive editor, overseeing the newsroom during the 2016 presidential coverage, and the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe. A native of Boston, Peter is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School. As an editor, he has overseen two Pulitzer Prize-winning series and five other finalists. As a writer, he has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the George Polk Award, among many other honors. He also edited the Globe’s book, Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy, which was a top-10 New York Times bestseller.
March 28, 2024: Dr. Peter Hanson
Evaluating Congress: The Cost of Partisan Polarization and Prospects for Reform
Peter Hanson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Grinnell College and the director of the Grinnell College National Poll. He is the author of Too Weak to Govern: Majority Party Power and Appropriations in the U.S. Senate (Cambridge University Press 2014). He is a specialist on the United States Congress and the politics of the federal budget. He is a regular guest on Iowa Public Radio and interviews with him have appeared in a variety of national media outlets. Dr. Hanson earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 and his A.B. from Harvard University in 1995. From 1996 – 2002, he served on the staff of Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). His areas of focus were appropriations and environmental policy.
February 22, 2024: The Honorable Richard Gergel
The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Igniting of the Modern Civil Rights Movement
Richard Gergel is a judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. A native South Carolinian, he earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from Duke University and practiced law for 30 years before being confirmed as a federal judge in 2010. He is a prolific writer and the author of the book Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, about the blinding of an American soldier in police custody and its profound impact on the civil rights movement.
November 7, 2023: Philip Shenon
A Cruel and Shocking Act: Sixty Years After the Kennedy Assassination
Philip Shenon is an investigative journalist and award-winning author. As a reporter for The New York Times for more than twenty years, Shenon served as the Washington correspondent covering the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and the State Department, and also served as a foreign correspondent, reporting from more than 60 countries and several war zones. His book A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (Henry Holt 2013) was awarded the Francis Parkman Prize by the Society of Historians at Columbia University as the best American history book of the year. He is the author of the bestselling book, The Commission; The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission (Twelve, 2008)..
September 12, 2023: Kermit Roosevelt III
The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story
Kermit Roosevelt III is the David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the author of books including The Nation that Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story, (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Conflict of Laws (Foundation Press, 2010, 3rd ed. 2022), and The Myth of Judicial Activism: Making Sense of Supreme Court Decisions (Yale, 2006). He earned an A.B. in Philosophy, summa cum laude, from Harvard University and his law degree from Yale Law School. He was a law clerk to retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and served as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States established by President Biden in 2021. Professor Roosevelt is the great-great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Thursday, April 6, 2023: John Stauffer
GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
John Stauffer is the Kates Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He is the author or editor of 20 books and over 100 articles, including The Black Hearts of Men, co-winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize; GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, a national bestseller; The Battle Hymn of the Republic; and Picturing Frederick Douglass. His essays and reviews have appeared in Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and in exhibition catalogs, journals, and books. Professor Stauffer has presented on CNN and other national television and radio stations and has served as a consultant or co-curator on films, exhibitions, and video games including God in America; Django Unchained; WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY; The Free State of Jones; The Abolitionists; Picturing Frederick Douglass; Red Dead Redemption 2; Reconstruction: America After the Civil War; Lincoln’s Dilemma; and Black Patriots: Heroes of the Civil War. He has been honored by Harvard for excellence in teaching, including being named a Harvard “favorite professor” in 2021. He earned his undergraduate degree from Purdue University and his Ph.D. from Yale University.
Thursday, March 2, 2023: Sonali Chakravarti
Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and Public Life
Sonali Chakravarti is a Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. She is the author of two books, Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and Public Life (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and Sing the Rage: Listening to Anger After Mass Violence (University of Chicago Press, 2014). She has published many peer-reviewed articles in and also writes for popular media including The Atlantic, Salon, the Guardian, Dissent, and Boston Review. She was honored for Excellence in Teaching in 2021 and has been the Ann Plato Post-Doctoral Fellow at Trinity College and Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at Princeton University. She earned her B.A. from Swarthmore College and Her Ph.D. from Yale University. She has taught in Wesleyan’s Government department and College of Social Studies since 2009.
Tuesday, January 31, 2023: Marjorie Spruill
Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized American Politics
Marjorie J. Spruill, Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of South Carolina, is the author or editor of six books on woman suffrage, including One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, the companion volume to the PBS documentary “One Woman, One Vote.” Her other works on woman suffrage include New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States and several edited volumes including VOTES FOR WOMEN! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation. Spruill’s most recent book is Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics.
Tuesday, November 1, 2022: Nadine Strossen
HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship
Nadine Strossen is John Marshall Harlan II Professor Emerita, New York Law School, past national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), and a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). She is a leading expert and frequent speaker and media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties. Professor Strossen has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. She has been named by the National Law Journal as one of America’s “100 most influential lawyers” and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Her most recent book is HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship.
Thursday, September 22, 2022: Lawrence Norden, Esq.
Lawrence Norden is Senior Director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. He is lead author of the book The Machinery of Democracy; Protecting Elections in an Electronic World and co-author of Defending Democracies: Combatting Foreign Interference in a Digital Age. His work has been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. Brennan has testified before Congress and several state legislatures on issues pertaining to election law and security. He is a member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Board of Advisors and a graduate of the University of Chicago and the New York University School of Law.
Thursday, September 1, 2022: Joseph Uscinski
Getting Conspiracy Theories Right
Joseph E. Uscinski is professor of political science at the University of Miami’s College of Arts and Sciences in Coral Gables, Florida. He studies American politics, mainly focusing on conspiracy theories and misinformation. He is the author of three books, Conspiracy Theories, A Primer, American Conspiracy Theories (with Joseph Parent), and The People’s News: Media, Politics, and the Demands of Capitalism, as well as editor of Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them. His essays have appeared in national and international media outlets, including The Washington Post, Politico, Newsweek, CNN Online, and NBS News Online.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020: Marjorie J. Spruill
One Woman, One Vote: The Long Road to Ratification of the 19th Amendment
Marjorie J. Spruill, Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of South Carolina, is the author or editor of six books on woman suffrage, including One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, the companion volume to the PBS documentary “One Woman, One Vote.” Her other works on woman suffrage include New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States and several edited volumes including VOTES FOR WOMEN! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation. Spruill’s most recent book is Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019: THE HON. DAVID J. BARRON, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit
Waging War: When Congress and the Commander in Chief Clash
David J. Barron is Chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Before joining the court in 2014, he was the S. William Green Professor at Harvard Law School, whose faculty he joined in 1999. Barron served in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice from 1996 to 1999 and as acting head of the office from 2009 to 2010. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court. Barron holds a B.A. and J.D. from Harvard University and has written extensively about presidential and congressional authority during wartime. His book, Waging War; The Clash Between Presidents and Congress, 1776 to ISIS, won the William E. Colby Award in 2017.
Thursday, October 3, 2019: BRETT BRUEN, former White House Director of Global Engagement, 2013-2015
Adjusting to a Post-American World
Brett Bruen is President of the crisis communications firm Global Situation Room and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. From 2013-2015, he was the White House Director of Global Engagement, responsible for public diplomacy programs, international media, crisis communications, and global entrepreneurship programs. Before serving in the White House, Bruen was a U.S. Diplomat for 12 years, serving in Ivory Coast, Liberia, Guinea, Iraq, Venezuela, Argentina, Zambia, and Eritrea. He earned his undergraduate degrees, with honors, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.A. in Global History from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019: RICHARD BROOKHISER
John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court
Richard Brookhiser is the author of more than a dozen books, including John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court, Alexander Hamilton, American, and Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. He wrote and co-hosted the Michael Pack films “Rediscovering George Washington,” which aired on PBS in 2002, and “Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton,” which aired on PBS in 2011. He is currently at work on a film about John Marshall. He is a senior editor of the National Review, where he began working in 1977 after graduating from Yale. His work has appeared in various national publications, including American History, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair and The New York Times. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2008.
Thursday, April 25, 2019: ANDREW BURSTEIN and NANCY ISENBERG
Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Professors of History at Louisiana State University, are the authors of several highly-regarded and best-selling books. Most recently, Dr. Isenberg’s book, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, has been a New York Times bestseller and an international phenomenon. Dr. Burstein’s most recent highly-regarded book is Democracy’s Muse: How Thomas Jefferson Became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic, All the While Being Dead. They lectured on the topic of their newest book, The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality.
Thursday, April 11, 2019: HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
How the South Won the Civil War: The Significance of the West in American History
Heather Cox Richardson is a Harvard-educated professor of history at Boston College and the author of several highly-regarded books that, among other accolades, have been Editors’ Selections of the History Book Club and The New York Times Book Review. She is a national commentator on American political history and the Republican Party. In 2019, she began writing a daily synopsis of political events analyzed in light of history and posting it on Twitter. This synopsis became her famous “Letters from an American” newsletter published on Substack and read by millions. In December 2020, she became the most successful individual author of a paid publication on Substack. Her two most recent books are How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America (Oxford University Press, 2020), and New York Times bestseller Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (Viking, 2023). In 2022, she was named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019: JAN-WERNER MUELLER
Populist Authoritarianism: What Can Be Done?
Jan-Werner Mueller is Professor of Politics at Princeton University, where he also directs the Project in the History of Political Thought. His highly-acclaimed book, What is Populism?, has been translated into more than twenty languages, and his most recent book, Democracy Rules, was published in 2021 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). He studied at the Free University, Berlin; University College, London; St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and Princeton University. He earned his D. Phil from Oxford University.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019: THE HONORABLE ROBERT L. WILKINS, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Judge Wilkins played a key role in the establishment of the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and is author of the book Long Road to Hard Truth: The 100-Year Mission to Create the National Museum of African American History and Culture. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he had a distinguished career as a public defender for the District of Columbia and then as a partner in a large private law firm. In 2010, he was appointed U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia, where he served until his appointment to the the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2014.
Thursday, November 8, 2018: CHARLES ANTHONY SMITH
Gerrymandering in America: Revenge of the Anti-Federalists
Tony Smith is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is co-author, with Anthony J. McGann, Michael Latner, and Alex Keena, of the book Gerrymandering in America, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Popular Sovereignty, which will be the subject of his lecture. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego; his M.S. from Utah State University; his J.D. from the University of Florida, and his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018: CHARLES LEWIS
Twist and Shout: Public Discourse, Political Dysfunction and Democracy in America
Charles Lewis, Professor in American University’s School of Communications, is one of the country’s leading investigative journalists. His is a former ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes producer and the founder of two Pulitzer Prize-winning non-profit news organizations, the Center for Public Integrity and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He will lecture on the indispensable role of the media with respect to civil discourse and an informed electorate and will address the incredible challenges the country is now facing in that regard. Professor Lewis earned his M.A. from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Delaware.
Thursday, April 5, 2018: SOPHIA Z. LEE
The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right
Sophia Lee is Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School where she is also Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law. She earned her Ph.D. at Yale University, her J.D. at Yale Law School, and her M.S.W. and B.A. at the University of California at Berkeley. She is former law clerk to the Honorable Kimba Wood, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Dr. Lee’s book, The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right, won Honorable Mention by the 2015 J. Williard Hurst Prize, Law & Society Association.
Thursday, March 1, 2018: ANNE MARIE LOFASO
Anne Lofaso is a former college athlete as well as a distinguished legal scholar. She served as a lecturer during Women’s History Month by discussing Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, which requires equal access for women in all aspects of education, including in sports, and represented a great stride toward achieving gender equality in America. Dr. Lofaso, the Arthur B. Hodges Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law, co-founded the WVU U.S. Supreme Court Clinic with Jones Day Partner. She earned her D.Phil., Law at the University of Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar and her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She earned her A.B. in History and Science, magna cum laude, from Harvard University, where she was a collegiate swimmer. Before beginning her academic career, she spent a decade at the National Labor Relations Board’s appellate and Supreme Court branches.
Thursday, NOVEMBER 9, 2017: MARC J. HETHERINGTON
Fixed World View or Fluid: Why Republicans and Democrats Hate Each Other
Dr. Marc Hetherington is the author of several books on polarization and authoritarianism in American politics. He is the Raymond Dawson Bicentennial Chair of Political Science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author or co-author of the books Why Washington Won’t Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis (with Thomas Rudolph); Authoritarianism and Polarization in America (with Jonathan D. Weiler); and Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism, as well as three editions of the textbook Parties, Politics, and Public Policy in America, published by CQ Press. Dr. Hetherington has lectured throughout the United States (including at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Virginia, among others) and abroad, including at the London School of Economics.
Wednesday, OCTOBER 11, 2017: WIL HAYGOOD
Thurgood Marshall’s Battle for Justice
Wil Haygood is an award-winning and internationally-known biographer and journalist. He has been national and foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,and national writer for The Washington Post. His book on Thurgood Marshall, SHOWDOWN: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America, has been recognized with many prizes, including the Scribes Book Award for the best book on American law. He received the Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Alicia Patterson Fellowships, as well as published Tigerland (Knopf, 2018). Haygood is Distinguished Scholar in Residence at his alma mater, Miami University of Ohio.
September 28, 2017: JASON BRENNAN
Jason Brennan, known as one of the world’s leading academic experts on voting and political knowledge, argues that citizens have a right to competent government, “[b]ut democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short.” He argues that while it is the best system we have known of so far, it might be better to experiment with new systems and find out if another would be better. Dr. Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Chair and Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics and Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and the author of several highly regarded books, including Against Democracy and The Ethics of Voting.
April 13, 2017: THOMAS HEALY
Thomas Healy is the author of The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind – and Changed the History of Free Speech in America, which won the 2014 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Book Award. It was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and named one of the 15 best non-fiction books of 2013 by the Christian Science Monitor. In 2015, Professor Healy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He earned his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked as a journalist, including as the Supreme Court correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, before attending law school at Columbia, from which he earned his J.D. While at Columbia Law School, he was a James Kent Scholar, a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Book Review and Essay Editor of the Columbia Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Judge Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and then practiced law at Sidley Austin Brown and Wood in Washington, D.C., before accepting his teaching position at Seton Hall University School of Law, where he teaches Constitutional and First Amendment law.
November 9, 2016: JEAN EDWARD SMITH
Jean Edward Smith was the John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall from 1999 to 2012, and the John Marshall Professor of Political Science Emeritus until his passing on September 1, 2019. He joined Marshall’s faculty after retiring from the University of Toronto, where he taught for more than 30 years. In addition to BUSH, he authored The Liberation of Paris: How Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and von Choltitz Saved the City of Light; Eisenhower in War and Peace; FDR, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians; Grant, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; John Marshall: Definer of a Nation; Lucius D. Clay: An American Life, and The Defense of Berlin. George Will has called him “today’s foremost biographer of formidable figures in American history.” Professor Smith earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
October 18, 2016: JAMES C. COBB
From Truman to Trump: The South and America since World War II
James C. Cobb is the Spalding Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Georgia and an award-winning author of several books focused on Southern culture and history. He is the former president of the Southern Historical Association. He has published extensively in both scholarly journals and in national popular media, including The New York Times, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He has been awarded fellowships by the Fulbright Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He earned his A.B., his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.
September 29, 2016: ALAN I. ABRAMOWITZ
Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Polarized American Electorate: What to Expect in November
Alan Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Chair and Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He is an expert on national politics, polling and elections. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including The Polarized Public: Why American Government is So Dysfunctional (2013); The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization and American Democracy (2010); and Voice of the People: Elections and Voting in the United States (2004). He also publishes extensively in scholarly journals and national popular media, including The Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He earned his B.A. with High Honors from the University of Rochester and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
April 7, 2016: FREDERICK E. HOXIE
This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made
Frederick Hoxie the Swanlund Professor of History and Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches courses on American social and political history, race and ethnicity, Native American history, American Indian law, and U.S. politics. He is the author of books including This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made (Penguin USA, 2012); Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices From the Progressive Era (2001); The Encyclopedia of North American Indians (1996); Parading Through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935 (1995); The Crows (1989); and A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the American Indians, 1880-1920 (1984). He is general editor of The American Indians, a 23-volume series of books published by Time-Life, and series editor (with Neal Salisbury) for Cambridge Studies in American Indian History, published by Cambridge University Press. He earned his B.A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He has served on the boards of Amherst College and the Illinois Humanities Council and was a founding trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
February 25, 2016: JONATHAN W. WHITE
Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties during the Civil War
Jonathan White is an historian of the American Civil War with a particular interest in Abraham Lincoln, American politics and the U.S. Constitution. He is an assistant professor of American Studies and a Fellow in the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is also the author of several books and articles about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. His book, Emancipation, the Union Army and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (Louisiana State University Press, 2014), was selected by the Civil War Monitor as one of the best books of 2014. He is the author of several additional books, including Lincoln on Law, Leadership and Life (2015); Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017); “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), which he co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway; Untouched by the Conflict: The Civil War Letters of Singleton Ashenfelter, Dickinson College (2019) with student Daniel Glenn; and My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss (2021) with Lydia Davis. His most recent book is A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022). He has received numerous awards, including the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize in 2023, the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, in 2015, and the Thomas Jefferson Book Prize in 2012. He is a frequent contributor to blogs including The New York Times Civil War “Disunion” and the Civil War Monitor. He earned his B.A. from Pennsylvania State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.
October 15, 2015: CHARLES R. DISALVO
Professor DiSalvo is the Woodrow A. Potesta Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law, where he has taught since 1979. He teaches one of the few law school courses in the United States on civil disobedience, and has represented litigants in cases involving civil disobedience in state and federal trial and appellate courts. Professor DiSalvo earned his B.A. in History from St. John Fisher College; his M.A. in East Asian studies from Claremont Graduate School, and his law degree from the University of Southern California, where he was an editor of the law review. He is the author of M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law: The Man Before the Mahatma, the only book focusing solely on Gandhi’s career as a lawyer and how it led him to his invention and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience to achieve justice that the legal system had failed to provide.
September 10, 2015: HEATHER GERKEN
The Real Problem with Citizens United: Campaign Finance, Dark Money and Shadow Parties
Heather Gerken is the Dean of Yale Law School. At the time of her lecture, she was the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches election law and constitutional law. She clerked for Justice David Souter of the United States Supreme Court. She has won teaching awards at both Yale and Harvard and has been named one of the nation’s “twenty-six best law teachers” by a book published by the Harvard University Press. She earned her B.A. in History, summa cum laude, from Princeton University, and her law degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Michigan.
April 16, 2015: LUCAS MOREL
War and Remembrance in Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
Lucas Morel is the Class of 1960 Professor of Ethics and Politics and Chair of the Politics Department, Washington & Lee University, where he has taught since 1999. Dr. Morel earned his B.A. in Government from Claremont McKenna College, and his M.A. in Politics and Ph.D. in Political Science from The Claremont Graduate School. His teaching and research focuses on American government, political theory, Abraham Lincoln and black American politics. In 2008-09, he was the Garwood Visiting Research Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is the author of the book Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government (Lexington Books 2000); and editor of Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages (University Press of Kentucky, 2015) and Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to “Invisible Man” (University Press of Kentucky, 2004).
November 20, 2014, SAMUEL ISSACHAROFF
Samuel Issacharoff is the Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. He has taught law for more than 25 years and has been recognized for excellence in teaching at NYU, Columbia and the University of Texas. As a practicing lawyer, he focused on voting rights litigation and other civil rights cases. He served as Senior Counsel to the Obama for America campaign in 2008 and 2012. He earned his B.A. in History from the State University of New York at Binghamton and his J.D. from Yale Law School.
October 7, 2014, DAVID O. STEWART
American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America
David O. Stewart is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and a former law clerk to Supreme Court Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. As a lawyer practicing in Washington, D.C., he has handled high-profile criminal and constitutional matters and his appellate work includes arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the award-winning author of The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution; Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy; American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America; The Lincoln Deception; Madisons Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America; and George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father in 2021.
September 11, 2014, LAURA K. DONOHUE
The Future of Privacy, Uncertain
Laura K. Donohue is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Center on National Security and the Law at Georgetown University Law Center. She has been a project director for the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security on projects related to mass-terror incidents. Professor Donohue earned her A.B. in Philosophy (with Honors) from Dartmouth College, her M.A. in Peace Studies (with Distinction) from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, her J.D. (with Distinction) from Stanford Law School, and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also the author of The Future of Foreign Intelligence: Privacy and Surveillance (Oxford University Press, 2016) and The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power, Politics, and Liberty (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
April 1, 2014, STEPHEN G. HARVEY
Creationism on Trial: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District: The 20th Century Monkey Trial
Steve Harvey served as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the first case in the nation to test whether “intelligent design” can be introduced into the curriculum of public high school science classes. After a 40-day trial, the court struck down intelligent design as a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion. Mr. Harvey is a former federal appellate law clerk and started his career in the Honors Program of the U.S. Department of Justice as a trial lawyer in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division. He was a partner at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Philadelphia before founding Steve Harvey Law, a litigation boutique firm in Philadelphia. He is a member of the Legal Advisory Committee of the National Center for Science Education.
March 11, 2014, DAVID RUDOVSKY
Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration and Racial Injustice in America
David Rudovsky is Senior Fellow and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is also one of the nation’s leading civil rights and criminal defense attorneys as a founding partner of the civil rights law firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg. He is the co-author of the books Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation (West, 2012, 3rd ed.) and The Law of Arrest, Search, and Seizure in Pennsylvania (6th ed. 2011, PBI Press). He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and Award for Accomplishments in Civil Rights Law and Criminal Justice; the ACLU Civil Liberties Award; and the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Cesare Beccaria Award for Criminal Justice Accomplishments. He is a five-time recipient of the Harvey Levin Award for Excellence in Teaching at Penn Law and a past winner of the University of Pennsylvania Lindback Award for Teaching Excellence. He earned his B.A. from Queen’s College and his LL.B. from New York University Law School.
February 4, 2014, BRIAN DIRCK
Abraham Lincoln and Constitutional Optimism
Brian Dirck is a Professor of History at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana, where he teaches courses in History and Political Science. He is the author of four well-regarded books about Abraham Lincoln, including Lincoln the Lawyer, an overview of Lincoln’s legal career and winner of the Benjamin Barondess Award from the New York Civil War Roundtable for the best book published on Lincoln in 2007. Dr. Dirck earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Kansas, where he studied under preeminent Civil War and Lincoln scholar Philip S. Paludan. He earned his M.A. from Rice University and his B.A. from the University of Central Arkansas.
November 5, 2013, LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN
On Constitutional Disobedience
Louis Michael Seidman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught since 1976. He is the author of four books about various issues related to the Constitution, including one on the subject of his lecture, On Constitutional Disobedience (Oxford, 2012), and the co-author of five textbooks on Constitutional Law. He earned his A.B. from the University of Chicago and his J.D. from Harvard. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and subsequently as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
October 8, 2013, JAMES F. SIMON
FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, The Supreme Court and the Epic Battle over the New Deal
James F. Simon is Dean Emeritus and Martin Professor of Law Emeritus of New York Law School. Mr. Simon has written eight books on American history, law and politics, including FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, The Supreme Court and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal (Simon & Schuster, 2012). He was a commentator in the PBS series The Supreme Court. He earned both his B.A. and his law degree from Yale University.
April 18, 2013, GREGORY FRIEL
Gay Rights in America: From Death, Oppression, and Stigma to Marriage Equality
Greg Friel, a graduate of Marshall University and Harvard Law School, has worked in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for more than two decades. He has spent his career fighting discrimination.
April 8, 2013, CLIFF SLOAN
The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court
Cliff Sloan, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, clerked in the U.S. Supreme Court, and has served as Associate Counsel to the President and as Assistant to the Solicitor General. He is the co-author of The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall and the Battle for the Supreme Court.
November 29, 2012, GEORGE C. EDWARDS
Evaluating the Electoral College
George C. Edwards III, Ph.D., is a leading scholar of the presidency and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. He is the founder and, from 1991-2001, was the director of The Center for Presidential Studies.
October 16, 2012, DANIEL FELLER
The People’s Will Denied? Backroom Politics and the Election of 1824
Daniel Feller, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities Emeritus and Editor/Director Emeritus of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee. Feller served as Jackson project director from 2003 until his retirement in 2020.
September 26, 2012, THOMAS E. MANN
Thomas Mann, Ph.D., is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He is the co-author, with Norm Ornstein, of It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism
March 6, 2012, JOYCE E. McCONNELL
Remember the Ladies: The History of Women and the Constitution
Joyce E. McConnell, at the time of her lecture, was the William J. Maier, Jr., Dean of the West Virginia University College of Law and the Thomas R. Goodwin Professor of Law. In 2019, she became the first woman President of Colorado State University.
February 23, 2012, STEPHEN MIDDLETON
Stephen Middleton is Professor of History and Director of African American Studies at Mississippi State University. He is the author of The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio. He has written extensively on race and the law. He earned the doctoral degree at Miami University (Ohio) and, as a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History, completed the first year curriculum in law at the New York University School of Law.
February 10, 2012, FREDERICK SCHAUER
Frederick Schauer is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Jurisprudence. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and former holder of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Schauer has written extensively on freedom of speech and press, constitutional law and theory, evidence, legal reasoning, and the philosophy of law. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth, and the Harvard Law School.
November 17, 2011, JOHN FRIEDL
Through the Looking Glass: The Constitution Means What Five Justices Want it to Mean
John Friedl is a Professor Emeritus at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He teaches Constitutional Law, Civil Liberties, First Amendment, Mass Communication Law, and Business Law. He earned a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and a M.P.H. and J.D. from the University of Michigan. He has published widely in the fields of law, anthropology, public health, and public policy in higher education.
October 11, 2011, JOHNATHAN O’NEILL
Originalism and the Rule of Law
Johnathan O’Neill is a Professor of History at Georgia Southern University where he teaches courses on U.S. Constitutional History and Legal History. He earned his B.A. from Colgate University and his Master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. He is the author of the books Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History and Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism since the New Deal.
September 1, 2011, JEAN EDWARD SMITH
John Marshall and the Legalization of the Constitution
Jean Edward Smith is the author of John Marshall: Definer of a Nation, and 14 other books. His biography of Ulysses S. Grant was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and his biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt won the prestigious Francis Parkman Prize in 2008. He received his A.B. magna cum laude from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Smith was awarded an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters from Marshall University, where he was the John Marshall Professor of Political Science for 12 years and, after his retirement from that position, the John Marshall Professor of Political Science Emeritus until his passing on September 1, 2019. He served for more than 30 years on the faculty of the University of Toronto and, at various times, was visiting faculty at Columbia, Princeton and Georgetown.
