The American Founders established a political community on a distinctive understanding of what it means to be a human being. What did it mean to the American Founders, what has it meant throughout American history, and what does it mean to us to be a human being? How are the foundations, forms, and purposes of American political institutions affected by our understanding of what it means to be a human being? How is the American character influenced by the American understanding of what it means to be a human being—and vice versa? How does the success of American Democracy depend on the character (or the humanity) of the American people? These are the questions to be addressed (and surely to be left inadequately answered) in this institute. We will consider these questions through the study of primary documents from the founding period, the writings of American poets, novelists, preachers, and essayists, speeches of American statesmen, and, if time permits, some American art and music, and a few classic American movies.

Faculty: Christopher Flannery is Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Azusa Pacific University. He has written and taught for many years about the American Founding and American Founders. David Tucker is an Associate Professor of History at the Naval Post Graduate School. He has published on Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and is the author of Skirmishes at the Edge of Empire, and co-editor of Statecraft and Power.

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