The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) is pleased to announce that Paul A. Rahe, Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in Western Heritage and Professor of History at Hillsdale College, will deliver this year’s annual David Aldrich Nelson Lecture in Constitutional Jurisprudence on Monday, September 17, 2012 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the Welles Brown Room, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester.  The event, co-sponsored by the AHI, its affiliate AHI Rochester, and the University of Rochester Republican Club, is open to the public.

Dr. Rahe, a noted historian of political philosophy will be speaking on “Montesquieu and the Federalist: A Republicanism Suited to an Extended Territory.”

After reading Litterae Humaniores at Wadham College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship from 1971-1974,  Dr. Rahe completed a Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale University under the direction of Donald Kagan in 1977. In subsequent years, he taught at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa. He has published dozens of books and articles, including Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992) and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville on the Modern Prospect published by Yale University Press (2009). Professor Rahe’s entire scholarly career has been focused on studying the origins and evolution of self-government within the West.

The lecture honors David Aldrich Nelson (1932-2010), a distinguished federal judge who served for decades on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and was a charter member of the AHI’s board of directors.