Saturday, January 31, 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle over Power in America

with Jeffrey Rosen

How the opposing constitutional visions of Jefferson and Hamilton have defined our country for 250 years.

In The Pursuit of Liberty, bestselling author and president of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power, a debate that continues to define—and divide—our country. Jefferson championed states’ rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a powerful executive. This ongoing tug-of-war has shaped pivotal moments in American history, including Abraham Lincoln’s fight against slavery and southern secession, the expansion of federal power under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Ronald Reagan’s and Donald Trump’s conservative push to shrink the size of the federal government. The Pursuit of Liberty is a compelling history of the opposing forces that have shaped our country since its founding, and our ongoing struggle to balance liberty and power.

Biography
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He was previously the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a staff writer for the New Yorker. 

He is the author of The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle over Power in America as well as New York Times bestsellers The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America and Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. In 2024, the French government recognized him as a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Saturday, February 21, 2026
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History

with Michael D. Hattem

The surprising history of how Americans have fought over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution for nearly two and a half centuries.

Americans agree that their nation’s origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. In this sweeping take on American history, Michael D. Hattem reveals how conflicts over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution—including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—have influenced the most important events and tumultuous periods in the nation’s history. Whether it has been African Americans, women, and other oppressed groups shaping the popular memory of the Revolution, or the Cold War influencing our contemporary memory of the nation’s founding, Hattem shows how the meaning of the Revolution has never been fixed.

Biography
Michael D. Hattem is the Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and a historian with interests in early America, the American Revolution, and historical memory. He authored The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History and Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution. His work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other media publications and outlets. He is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence for Oxford University Press.

Saturday, March 21, 2026
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM 

Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution

with Molly Beer

A women-centric view of the American Revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church.

In an enthralling and revealing view of the Revolutionary era through the eyes of Angelica Schuyler Church, Molly Beer breathes vibrant new life into a period usually dominated by masculine themes and often dulled by familiarity. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed. A woman of great influence in a time of influential women (Catherine the Great and Marie-Antoinette were contemporaries), Angelica was at the red-hot center of American history at its birth. In telling her story, Beer illuminates how American women have always plied influence and networks for political ends, including the making of a new nation.

Biography
Raised on a farm in the town of Angelica, New York, Molly Beer is an award-winning nonfiction writer interested in history, women, politics, and place. Angelica is her debut book She has served as an Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and currently teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Saturday, April 11, 2026
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic

with Lindsay Chervinsky

An authoritative account of the second president of the United States and his lasting influence on the office.

Making the Presidency is an authoritative exploration of the second US presidency, a period critical to the survival of the American republic. Through meticulous research and engaging prose, Lindsay Chervinsky illustrates the unique challenges faced by Adams and shows how he shaped the office for his successors. One of the most qualified presidents in American history, he had been a legislator, political theorist, diplomat, minister, and vice president—but he had never held an executive position. Instead, the quixotic and stubborn Adams would rely on his ideas about executive power, the Constitution, politics, and the state of the world to navigate the hurdles of the position. He defended the presidency from his own often obstructionist cabinet, protected the nation from foreign attacks, and forged trust and dedication to election integrity and the peaceful transfer of power between parties, even though it cost him his political future.

Offering a portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential periods in US history, Making the Presidency is a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of the presidency and the creation of political norms and customs at the heart of the American republic.

Biography
Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, and the forthcoming book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic. She regularly writes for public audiences in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Bulwark, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post.

Thursday, May 07, 2026
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom

with Adam Jortner

A new history that centers Judaism at the dawn of the United States.

Historian Adam Jortner shows how Judaism was central to the debate over religious freedom in America at a critical juncture. Jews played a critical role both in winning the American Revolution—fighting for the Patriot cause from Bunker Hill to Yorktown—and in defining the republic that was created from it. As Jortner reveals in this eye-opening account, the decision to extend citizenship to all religions was not a twentieth-century phenomenon prompted by immigration and Supreme Court rulings, but a debate the Founding generation itself had had —unambiguously deciding against the idea of a nation defined exclusively by Christianity. Instead, the Founders, Jewish patriots, and their allies sought and achieved the broadest possible definition of religious liberty, and the separation of church and state. A Promised Land sheds new light on this key struggle in early America and the driving forces behind it.

Biography

Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in the Department of History. He specializes in the history of religion in the American Revolution and the early nation, with particular emphasis on religious liberty, patriotism and piety, theology, and new religious traditions. In addition to A Promised Land, he is the author of The Gods of Prophetstown, an award-winning study of Native American religion, deism, and military conflict in the Old Northwest, and Blood from the Sky, a history of miracles in the early republic.

This program is made possible in part by the generosity of Mike E. Larsen.

Saturday, June 13, 2026
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Freedom Round the Globe: A New History of the American Revolution

with Sarah Pearsall

Freedom Round the Globe: A New History of the American Revolution

Historian Sarah Pearsall’s new global history of the American Revolution—encompassing places as distant as Kolkata, St. Kitts, Ghana, and Guangzhou—offers a new view of this epoch-defining set of events. In 1776, all kinds of people around the world, not just the men who declared independence, sought the end of oppression, asserting rights to life, liberty, and happiness. This broader Revolution was more contested, protracted, and diverse, with a wider cast of characters than is usually assumed. Piecing together a number of unexpected locations and unheralded “founders,” this book tells the story of the American Revolution in a surprising and novel way and clarifies the Revolution’s origins, trajectory, ideas, and action.

Biography
Sarah Pearsall is a professor of History at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in the history of North America in the early modern era, especially the colonial and revolutionary periods of what is now the United States. In addition to Freedom Round the Globe, she is the author of Polygamy: An Early American History and Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century.