The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) is pleased to announce that it will be holding a spring seminar, open to the public, beginning Monday, January 27, at 6:30 p.m. on “What Is Conservatism?”  Dr. David Frisk, the AHI’s 2014 Theodore J. Eismeier Fellow, will direct the seminar. It will feature several invited guests, experts in the field, who will speak on the topic.  The seminar, part of the AHI’s civic outreach and continuing education programming, will run weekly on Monday evenings from January 27 to May 5, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the AHI’s Westlake Media Center.

The seminar is open to the public, but seating is limited.  Both the seminar and books will be provided free of charge by the AHI. Refreshments will also be provided. Those interested in attending should email David Frisk at dfrisk@theahi.org or Robert Paquette at bob@theahi.org, or by calling 315-292-2267.

Dr. Frisk is an award-winning journalist who received a Ph.D. in political science from the Claremont Graduate University in 2009.  His specialties include American politics and political philosophy. He published If Not Us, Who? William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement (ISI Books, 2012). He taught American government at Concordia University in California and worked at the Claremont Institute.

Conservatism in the United States consists of multiple strains of political thinking. Dr. Frisk will study the main elements of conservatism as a political belief system, with a special—though not total— emphasis on conservatism as it has been advocated in the United States. In particular, he will explore the tensions between the stress on individual rights and limited government, which is an important part of the American Right, and such specifically conservative principles as tradition, hierarchy, cultural unity or conformity, faith or piety, and an objectively true moral order.  Class participants will address the question:  “What are conservatives trying to conserve?”