Spring 2007: UAA Polaris lecture series welcomes Charles Kesler

Expert will speak on Thomas Jeffersons tombstone accomplishments

 

UAA continues its highly regarded Polaris lecture series when it hosts Charles Kesler, Professor of Government and Director of the Henry Salvatori Center at Claremont McKenna College, for an evening event entitled "Jefferson's Tombstone."  This free lecture will be held on Friday, March 2 at 7:30 p.m. in UAA/APU Consortium Library, room 307.

Dr. Kesler's lecture, "Jefferson's Tombstone," will focus on the three accomplishments that Jefferson included on this tombstone: being the father of the University of Virginia, authoring the Declaration of Independence, and authoring of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.  These three accomplishments were essential elements in the founding of republican government in America.  In order to sustain itself, the republican government relied heavily on both the political and religious principles upheld and transmitted by public education.

Charles Kesler received his A.B. (in Social Studies, 1978) and his A.M. and Ph.D. (in Government, 1985) from Harvard University. He is editor of The Claremont Review of Books and a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.  He served as Vice Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the official U.S. James Madison Commemoration Commission, and as a member of the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemmings Scholars Commission. His edition of The Federalist Papers, published as a Signet Classic by Penguin Putnam, Inc., is the best-selling edition in the country.  He is the editor of and a contributor to Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding (The Free Press) and has written extensively on American constitutionalism and American political thought. His articles on contemporary politics have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Policy Review, National Review, The Weekly Standard, Intellectual Capital.com, and other journals.

The Polaris lectures, named for the North Star on Alaska's flag, address a wide range of subjects in the liberal arts.  Organized by the UAA Democracy Forum with assistance from the University Honors Forty-Ninth State Fellows Program, the Office of Community Partnerships, the Polaris Society, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Polaris lecture series began in the 1980s to commemorate the bicentenary of the American Constitution.