In celebration of John Adams’s 289th birthday, Jeffrey Rosen joins a discussion on Adams’s legacy with Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Jane Kamensky, president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Kurt Graham, president of the Adams Presidential Center, moderates. They explore the constitutional legacy of the Adams family—including John and Abigail Adams and John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams—and discuss the importance of resurrecting the Adams family’s tradition of self-mastery and self-improvement to defend the American Idea. This conversation was originally aired at the Adams Presidential Center as part of the 2024 Adams Speaker Series.
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Today’s episode was produced by Bill Pollock. It was engineered by the Adams Presidential Center and Bill Pollock. Thanks to the Adams Presidential Center for sharing the audio for this program.
Participants
Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Democratic Knowledge Project-Learn, a research lab focused on civic education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy.
Kurt Graham joined the Adams Presidential Center as its inaugural president on Oct. 15, 2024. Previous to joining the APC, Graham was the director of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Mo. As director, he oversaw a $30M renovation of the principal museum exhibits and dramatically expanded the library’s educational and public programming. He has also directed the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo., and the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. He is the author of To Bring Law Home: The Federal Judiciary in Early National Rhode Island (Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).
Jane Kamensky serves as the president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private nonprofit that owns and operates Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Va. For 30 years, Kamensky worked as a professor and higher education leader. Before joining Monticello, she served as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In her years as director of the Schlesinger Library, Kamensky successfully worked to raise the profile of the library to the most preeminent of its kind in the world by partnering with an international network of diverse scholars and thought leaders.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His most recent book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
Additional Resources
- Jeffrey Rosen,The Pursuit of Happiness (2024)
- Jane Kamensky, The Colonial Mosaic: American Women 1600-1760 (1998)
- Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014)
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