Clinton, NY, December 23, 2011 — The Board of Trustees of the Thomas W. Smith Foundation, has announced that the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) has been awarded a grant of $150,000.

This major grant, the largest in the four-year history of the AHI, will be used to design and implement three years’ of thematic programming. “We are delighted to support the Alexander Hamilton Institute,” wrote Chairman of the Board Thomas W. Smith, in the letter announcing the award.

“Each year the AHI devotes programming to an annual theme,” noted AHI Charter Fellow Douglas Ambrose.

From 2011 to 2014, the AHI will explore the roots of the current economic crisis, its domestic and international implications, and the threat posed by the regulatory state to American ideals and institutions. In 2011-12 the AHI will concentrate on the theme of “Limited Government: Free Markets, Private Property, and Personal Freedom”; in 2012-13, “What is a Civilizational Struggle? Examining the Crusades, the Civil War, the Cold War, and the War on Islamic Terrorism”; in 2013-2014: “Individualism and Its Critics: From John Locke to Barack Obama.”

“Precisely because of my scholarship in the history of slavery from a global perspective have I come to appreciate the singularity of the Western experience in the origin and cultivation of that precious and fragile concept, freedom,” wrote AHI Charter Fellow Robert Paquette in the acceptance letter. “Retention of the principles that animated our Constitution requires vigilance, strength, and memory. Thanks to the Smith Foundation, the AHI can contribute to the process of recovery and preservation.”

The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization

The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization is headquartered in Clinton, New York and was founded in 2007 to promote excellence in scholarship through the study of freedom, democracy, and capitalism. We create and support programs that provide for rigorous debate and the enhancement of civic and economic literacy. For more information please visit www.theahi.org.