Freedom, Democracy, and the U.S. Declaration of Independence: A Lecture by Peter Berkowitz – Thursday, January 25th at 5PM

Past Event

Location
The Athenaeum: 26 East Gaston Street, Savannah GA

Over nearly two and a half centuries, liberal democracy in America has been tempered, stabilized, and elevated by the convictions about unalienable rights that gave birth to the nation and which are inscribed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, but which do not belong to democracy’s original and core meaning.

As the United States confronts alarming levels of discord, division, and dysfunction, it is instructive to reconsider the nation’s founding principles, influential misconceptions propounded by intellectuals about the moral and political implications of those principles, and seminal lessons – ancient and modern – about freedom and democracy. A better understanding of the assumptions, ideas, and aims that spurred the transformation of thirteen British colonies into the world’s freest, most prosperous, and most diverse great power contributes to the restoration of that unity in diversity that remains, as it was at the founding, essential to advancing the public interest. Indeed, study of the Declaration forms a core component of liberal education, the distinctive form of civic education that is central to preserving and improving liberal democracy in America.

About the Speaker

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as Director of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights, and a senior adviser to the Secretary of State. He is a 2017 recipient of The Bradley Prize. Since 2015, he has been the director of studies at The Public Interest Fellowship. He writes about constitutional government, conservatism and progressivism, liberal education, human rights, national security and law, Middle-East politics, and U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of four books, editor of seven volumes, and a RealClearPolitics columnist. He has published hundreds of articles, essays, and reviews for a variety of newspapers, magazines, journals, and online outlets. He holds a JD and a PhD in political science from Yale University, an MA in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a BA in English literature from Swarthmore College.