The Constitution on Campus - The Center for American Studies - Christopher Newport University

The Constitution on Campus

September 22, 2022

Center for American Studies annual conference and 15-year anniversary celebration

Events will take place in Gaines Theatre unless otherwise noted.

Time Event
9:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Secrets, Russian Spies and Lies: The Difficulty of Attaining Constitutional Justice
Harvey Klehr, Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Emory University
11 a.m. - noon Die Gedanken Sind Frei: Freedom of Thought and Conscience in America's Classrooms
Bonnie Snyder, Former Director of K-12 Programs at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. Luncheon Keynote (Invitation Only) - “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: What Do They Know About Civics?”
David Student Union Boardroom
Mark Bauerlein, Senior Editor at First Things, Professor Emeritus of English at Emory University
1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. The First Amendment and Extramural Speech: What Can Professors Say in Public?
Keith Whittington, William E. Nelson Professor of Politics, Princeton University
3 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. America’s Constitution: How it Arose and How to Preserve it
Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University
4:30 p.m. - 5:45 p.m. Keynote Address: Dangerous Times for the “Least Dangerous Branch”: The Supreme Court in the Age of Rage
Jonathan Turley, J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law, George Washington University School of Law

Guest Speakers

A Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School. He is Yale’s only living 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. He has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society for his work, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the political spectrum in over 45 cases. He regularly testifies before Congress at the invitation of both parties; and in surveys of judicial citations and/or scholarly citations, he typically ranks among America’s five most-cited mid-career legal scholars. He has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic, and is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books. His latest book, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, was published in May 2021

Senior editor at First Things and Professor Emeritus in Emory University’s Department of English, where he taught since earning his Ph.D. in 1989. From 2003-05 he served as director of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment of the Arts. His latest books include The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults (2022) and The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (2015). His essays have appeared in PMLA, Partisan Review, Wilson Quarterly, Commentary, and New Criterion, and his commentaries and reviews in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Weekly Standard, The Guardian, Chronicle of Higher Education, and other national periodicals.

Andrew Mellon Professor Emeritus of Politics and History and former chairman of the Political Science Department at Emory University where he taught from 1971 to 2016. He was the recipient of the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award for Emory College in 1983 and was recognized as the University Scholar-Teacher of the Year by Emory in 1995. He served a six-year term as a member of the National Council on the Humanities from 2004-11. He has also written more than 120 articles and reviews for professional journals as well as Commentary, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and Weekly Standard. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, three of which have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, The Twisted Life of David Karr: The Story of a Soviet Spy was published in 2019.

Former director of school outreach at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) from 2017-22. She is an educator with over 20 years of experience in a variety of roles in different institutions, including teacher, counselor, administrator, and professor in both public and private schools. Originally from New Jersey, she is an honors graduate of Harvard University with a master’s degree in counseling from Virginia Tech and a doctorate in higher education from Penn State. She is the author of The New College Reality, The Unemployed College Graduate’s Survival Guide, Finding Your Voice: A Free Speech Comic, and Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools — And What We Can Do About It.

A nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. Ranked as 38th in the top 100 most cited “public intellectuals,” he has written over three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals at Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, University of Chicago, and other schools. Professor Turley joined the George Washington faculty in 1990 and, in 1998, was given the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law, the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history. He is currently the legal analyst for Fox News, and previously worked as a legal analyst for NBC, CBS, BBC, and Fox News. He is a columnist for USA Today, The Hill, and other national newspapers. Professor Turley’s columns on legal and policy issues appear regularly in national publications in such newspapers as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. His award-winning blog is routinely ranked as one of the most popular legal blogs. Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades including the representation of whistleblowers, military personnel, former cabinet members, judges, members of Congress, and a wide range of other clients.

A William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He is currently the chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, and has served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He has also served and is still currently a member, or visiting professor, at a vast arena of different institutions. He has published widely on American constitutional theory, American political and constitutional history, the law and politics of impeachment, judicial politics, the Presidency, and free speech, and his books have received numerous awards, including the Thomas M. Cooley Book Prize, the PROSE Award, the Heterodox Academy Award for Exceptional Scholarship, the C. Herman Pritchett Award for best book in law and courts, and the J. David Greenstone Award for best book in politics and history. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Reason, Lawfare, and his latest book Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present, was published in 2019.

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