The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) is pleased to announce that it will offer two courses for the fall semester, 2024. All AHI courses are free and open to the public. Advance signup is requested. Should you not be able to afford a copy of any required course reading, AHI will purchase it for you.
Course #1: Dr. David Frisk will lead both a Zoom and in-person course, “America’s Political Parties: Their History and Evolution.”
Course #2: Former Pentagon speech writer Lauren Weiner will lead a second course, “The Character of a Statesman: Presidents Lincoln and Coolidge through Their Speeches, Letters, and Personal Statements,” using Zoom.
Course #1: “America’s Political Parties: Their History and Evolution.” Instructor: David Frisk, Ph.D.—Resident Fellow, Alexander Hamilton Institute
Dr. Frisk’s online course, using Zoom, will meet on Wednesdays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Eastern time), September 18 through December 11, 2024.
Dr. Frisk’s in-person course will meet on Tuesdays in the AHI, 21 W. Park Row Clinton, NY, in the Presidential Room from 7 p.m. to 8:45 p.m., September 17 through December 10, 2024.
To sign up, or for more information, please contact Dr. Frisk at: dfrisk@theahi.org, or (202) 999-5751.
The course will focus on the development of America’s two major political parties since their founding in the 19th century. Major themes include changes in the two political parties’ emphases, principles, and sources of support as well as the continuities of the two parties throughout their history.
The course will briefly look at the evolution of the Federalists into the Federalist Party associated with Alexander Hamilton, and the Anti-Federalists into the first Republican Party (sometimes called Democratic-Republican) associated with Thomas Jefferson. At the end of the course, we will briefly consider the current characteristics of the Republican and Democratic parties.
Required reading for this course will be How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t) by the political historian and longstanding political pundit Michael Barone, sometimes called the man who knows the most about American politics. Class members are asked to buy the book, preferably a printed copy. In addition, short readings from other books—and from primary-source documents, such as key speeches—will be e-mailed to class members. The total reading will be about 25 to 30 pages a week.
Each class meeting will have a lecture-plus-discussion format, with more than half the time for discussion. We will take a 10-minute break.
Dr. Frisk’s degree is from Claremont Graduate University (2009), where he specialized in American politics and political philosophy. He is the author of the widely reviewed If Not Us, Who? William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement (ISI Books, 2012) and is working on an intellectual biography of the legendary political scientist Willmoore Kendall.
Dr. Frisk’s past AHI classes have examined political themes ranging from Hamilton and Jefferson to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the Civil War to the Cold War, and the principles of democratic systems, to most recently, conservative political philosophy.
Course #2: “The Character of a Statesman: Presidents Lincoln and Coolidge through Their Speeches, Letters, and Personal Statements.” Instructor: Lauren Weiner
Lauren Weiner’s online course, using Zoom, will meet on Mondays from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Eastern time) from September 23 through November 25, 2024.
To sign up, or for more information, please contact Lauren Weiner at: lweiner6@gmail.com.
Calvin Coolidge wrote of Abraham Lincoln: “Two generations have sought out whatever could be associated with him, have read the record of his every word with the greatest eagerness, and held his memory as a precious heritage. Where he trod is holy ground. Yet never was a man more simply human.”
Coolidge shared certain human qualities with Lincoln, though he is an obscure figure compared to the Great Emancipator. The year 2024 marks the centennial of the Coolidge presidency and gives us an occasion to study the 30th U.S. president alongside his role model, the 16th U.S. president. Both were steeped in the ideas of the American Founding and held those ideas as guides to political action.
In this course during the Presidential election, we will compare the moral formation, words, and deeds of Lincoln and Coolidge to glean lessons about American history and politics that are relevant today.
Lauren Weiner, a graduate of Kenyon College where she majored in English and Spanish, worked as an editor, reporter, Capitol Hill staffer, and Pentagon speechwriter. She penned literary reviews as well, and these have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, the Claremont Review of Books, the Weekly Standard, AmericanPurpose.com, the New Criterion, the Washington Times, and the Baltimore Sun.
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