Constitution Day Live 2024 | Built for This: Debate, Dialogue, and the Constitution

welcome to Constitution Day 2024 I am Kirk Higgins and I am joined by my colleague Rachel Davis and humph nice to see you all thanks for being here and joining us today on this very auspicious day Kirk what are we here for today so we’re here again to talk about Constitution Day as we have been for the past 5 years which is really exciting that we’ve been doing our Constitution Day live programming and this year we’re going to focus on the constitution in debate dialogue disagreement and how we’re built to overcome all of these things and I love that theme I think we really are built for this America as an institution knew that we would have a pluralist dynamic different Society from the very beginning and so there are institutions that help us support that help support all the work we’re doing to come together through difference absolutely and disagreement isn’t a bug in our constitutional system it’s actually a feature it’s something that happens when we’re all free to think and act as we see fit and it’s something that is enabled by our constitutional system and so today we’re going to dive deeply into that what it means to disagree how it is we can come to consensus and overcome that disagreement in order to move forward together as a country to help us unpack this theme further we’re joined by a great slate of guests starting with yal lein from the American Enterprise Institute who’s going to talk about how the Constitution helps unify us and then we’ll go to Eric me publisher of the Maran County Reporter if you’re not familiar with this story ripped from the headlines about freedom of the press and the courage it takes to really stand up for it in the modern day you’re going to want to make sure you check out that segment we’re also going to hear from our student fellows who have some excellent questions that are going to be answered by Professor Mark Rosell about how our constitutional system works then we’re going down to Dr Jane kamensky professor emeritus of history from Harvard and now president of monello and you all went down there to interview her we did it was great and it’s an excellent conversation and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with you all and then finally we’re going to sit down with Dr condalisa W who was formerly Secretary of State and now is the director of the Hoover institution at Stanford University Dr Rice was very generous with her time and had some great things to say about leadership and what it means to be a part of civil society and it’s such an honor that she came on our program for an interview and then at the very end so last but very much not least we are proud to announce the national Civics teacher of the year right here on Constitution Day that’s right that’ll be our concluding moment so I hope you’ll stick around and find out we’re really excited to honor another excellent teacher this year so our first conversation today is going to be with yal ofin and our colleague Tony Williams sat down with yall to talk about how it is that constitutional systems specifically our constitutional system can bring people together and overcome the disagreement that emerges in a free Society but how we go about doing that is really the question and the challenge and it is it’s it is a challenge because of the the pluralism of the complexity of our of our communities you know we have layers upon layers of federal ISM and layers upon layers of our of our responsibilities

that we have to different groups so how do we come together with all of that difference that’s right yeah disagreement is something that just naturally occurs we all have different views and opinions on different things so the question is how do we overcome that disagreement in order to find consensus and work to move together and youall says it really starts by us looking at the Constitution as more than just a set of laws that govern how it is that our constitutional framework Works which it is that but it’s also more it also signals to us as a polity or a self-governing community how it is that we ought to work and live together and so I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation between Tony and yall as they unpack that even further yal 11an is the director of the social cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute where he holds a chair in public policy he’s the author of several books including a time to build from family and Community to Congress and the campus how recommitting to our institutions can revive the American dream which we discussed on a previous episode of scholar talks and his latest book is the excellent American Covenant how the Constitution unified our nation and could again I am Tony Williams Senior fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and I am pleased to bring you another episode of scholar talks in in the topics in American government and Civic series You’ all want to thank you very much for joining me thanks very much Tony I appreciate it yeah thank you know I love American Covenant and I mean it’s so well written it’s a it’s a compelling read um such an important topic but but I’ll tell you most importantly while I was reading it I had a sense of hope I had a sense of confidence that you know that that will be okay that that whatever divisions might exist in American society and politics that we have the tools already at our disposal constitutionally uh and otherwise to um you know to find some common ground so uh it was very very hopeful message well I’m very glad to hear that you know hope is in a way at the very center of the book it’s uh it’s not uh optimistic exactly I don’t simply think everything is going to be fine but I think that we have the resources to improve our situation and that’s what hope looks like to me good good so uh why don’t we start with the problem so what is the problem today you know why does why does politics why do we seem sort of so dysfunctional and disunited um and and divided today you know I think one way to think about the nature of the problem that we have today is that we’ve forgotten the art of Coalition building um in a sense of course the problem we have is that we’re divided we’re polarized a lot of Americans feel alienated from each other I isolated from each other and sometimes we even blame our constitution our

political system for contributing to that for for sharpening our divisions but in fact when you look at our constitution as I try to do in this book it turns out that bringing a divided people together is actually one of its core purposes one of its Chief aims and when the Constitution describes its own purposes in the Preamble the first thing it says is that it exists to form a more perfect union and and at the heart of its approach to doing that is a way of of compelling differing competing factions in American Life to deal with each other um through negotiation through competition all of that involves ways of building coalitions Coalition building is really a way of turning minorities into majorities of making majorities larger and more durable and more legitimate that work is at the heart of what our vision of political life is all about and in 21st century America we’ve gotten really bad at it um we have forgotten what it looks like to work together with people that we don’t entirely agree with about everything where we can see paths toward common action toward agreed modes of action we don’t have to agree about every underlying premise and ways of doing that are what Congress is for they’re what Federalism is for they’re what our party system is for and all of those institutions are now now in bad shape I think we’ve been losing the The Knack for Coalition building and I would say ultimately that Knack is not about learning to agree with each other contemporary Americans are actually pretty good at agreeing with people they agree with we spend most of our time with people we agree with talking about people we disagree with what we’ve forgotten how to do is how to disagree and that is what the Constitution really can teach us to do in a practical way to live with disagreement to work through it and ultimately to arrive at modes of common action despite disagreement we’ve forgotten how to do that and that is I think the problem in Contemporary American political life right and and you’ve you’ve touched upon this a little bit already um but you argue you know I I think very interestingly that the constitution is just much more than just a legal framework it is that but but it’s much more so although you’ve touched upon it a little bit so if you can expand upon a little bit more and how can the Constitution actually help unify Americans the Constitution is law as you say that’s one of the things it is and it’s the supreme law of the land as it says itself uh in article six but it would be a mistake to leave the Constitution to lawyers and judges it isn’t just law It ultimately describes a polity it describes a way of living together as free people and a lot of what it offers us Beyond law you know as a legal framework the Constitution is a set of of boundaries and constraints but it also offers this ways of resolving disputes that fundamentally revolve

around negotiation competition uh kind of constructive tension all of which let us work through differences toward common action and I think there’s a there’s an idea of unity at the center of the Constitutional framework that says in a free Society Unity doesn’t mean thinking alike it means acting together which is a framework that I think forces us to ask how actually can we act together when we don’t think alike and the Constitution Beyond law is an answer to that question how can we act together when we don’t think alike we do it through negotiating we do it through bargaining we do it through competing and ultimately we do it through the institutions we do it through federalism in Congress and the presidency and the courts and I think to see that is not only to see how we might do better as a practical matter but also to understand what it means to live together as a free people that always going to be characterized by disagreements so that to be reacquainted with the Constitution which is what this book really tries to offer readers I think is to be reacquainted with that Vision that says Unity doesn’t mean unanimity the fact that we disagree doesn’t mean we have to be at war with each other there are ways to live together despite these differences right great uh and and something I found really fascinating is that what how can federalism and and a greater sense of localism actually promote greater Unity among among America yeah you know federalism I think is often misunderstood now even by some of its Defenders there’s a tendency to think about federalism as describing a layered government where there’s there’s a higher level at the national level there a lower level at a local level and we say where where should the power be and that was one of the ways that the the convention that created the Constitution began by thinking about the the the the state and and the national But ultimately they didn’t come to an an agreement on that sort of uh Federalist Arrangement there was a dispute about whether the states should be governing the people directly in which case the national government would just be a kind of Confederation like the UN or whether the national government should govern the people directly in which case the states would just be administrative districts like counties and ultimately they didn’t come to an agreement on that question they instead decided to do both at the same time the states and the national government both govern the people directly they do it when it comes to different issues to different domains of life and so we don’t have a layered government we have two parallel tracks of governing a national track where the national government does govern the people directly but only regarding a few issues National Security and diplomacy economic policy and since the post Civil War amendments also the protection of core equal rights and the states govern in other domains in all other domains the Basic Police powers of government

belong to the states that separation allows for genuine diversity of governance and therefore genuine diversity of ways of life in American political life I think that we have gradually lost that sense that we what we have are two parallel tracks of government and instead we’ve had a kind of intermixing of governing Powers particularly in education and Welfare and in health care and in all those areas that intermixing has not been good it’s not been good for American government I would argue it’s also not been good for our cohesion and our unity and I think that a forward-looking agenda of federalism reform would involve a lot of of pulling apart these governing Powers um of undoing that intermixing and even if there are more areas now that we think should be uh under the national government’s control we have to see that there should not be areas where both States and the national government govern at the same time where the states are spending Federal money where the federal government is using the states as basically administrators our system does not work well that way and when we do it it makes it impossible for us to have diverse forms of government simultaneously which is ultimately how federalism lets us live together better right uh and something I I think was was so critical to the book is is looking at Constitution the role of Congress right uh and so why is the first branch of government the Congress so Central to restoring Unity today yeah I think this is really important to understand in this moment when it’s so easy to look at Congress as dysfunctional as sort of secondary especially the presidency we we live in a republic and in a republican form of government and the frers say this over and over particularly in Federalist Papers in a republican form of government the legislative power necessarily is the predominant power it’s the most representative and we have ultimately a democratic government but it’s also the place where bargaining and negotiation can really happen as a practical matter and a government that is framed around the need to negotiate through differences is going to put the legislature at its Center um when Congress is working negotiation is at the center of the system and the system Sy works well when Congress is failing the entire system is failing and I think that’s a moment we’re living in now Congress is not doing its fundamental job of bargaining toward agreed upon modes of government uh very well and as a result a lot of power has flowed to the executive and to the Judiciary and increasingly members of Congress are willfully giving over their power to the other branches choosing not to exercise The Authority they have and the result of that is much greater division Congress is the only Venue at the at the national level where we can really have a politics of bargaining and negotiation

if we don’t do that we can’t have it anywhere we have administrative agencies that pretend to engage in bargaining and negotiation but that’s not really what they’re doing and the president is not a representative job certainly the courts can’t do that so I think we have to see that in order for our politics to facilitate negotiation and the resolution of differences let us be more united while we disagree our government has to have a more functional con at its Center the first branch is first for a reason right and just as a followup you know it really seems like in this Zero Sum game of politics where any any win for the other side is a loss for you and vice versa that and there’s just no idea that one would actually compromise or negotiate or or or engage in that kind of constructive politics exactly the cultural incentives in our politics now all push against that kind of logic and ultimately we have to change some of those incentives by changing the electoral system we can talk about that but we also have to think about how Congress functions and the kinds of incentives and signals that it sends to its own members about what success looks like I think we’ve had an excessive centralization of power in Congress where the leaders make all the decisions and all the members do is talk and if all you do is talk then you really do want a more confrontational political system because your voters want to hear you disagree with the other side if you don’t have something else to offer them like negotiated legislation that actually advances their interests and meets their needs then you do end up in a purely performative kind of political culture and that increasingly is what Congress looks like interesting all right so what roles uh might the president and the Supreme Court play in unifying Americans you know I think it’s easy to get confused about those because we we have come to think of the president’s job as a kind of second legislature um as existing to represent the entire nation all at once and as existing to advance public policy in a particular direction I think that’s very much at odds with how the framers of the Constitution thought about the presidency the president is one person and one person cannot represent 300 million people to really be representative you need a plural institution like the US Congress the president’s job is Administrative and the president is elected in order to be accountable not in order to be representative when we think about the role the president can play in facilitating greater cohesion and unity I think that has more to do with providing a stable backdrop for American political life and public life the president has the responsibility to secure both the the the defense and safety of the public and also a stable set of conditions for American Life what Alexander Hamilton calls steady Administration which is so far from how we now think about the nature of administration where a new president comes in the first thing he does is undoes half of what his predecessor did and then do all kinds of things that his successor is going to undo that creates enormous instability but it also when you look at it from the point of view of cohesion and unity it means that the

stakes of our presidential elections are unnaturally high so much changes with a new president that it seems like everything’s at stake in a presidential election and that raises the temperature that raises the divisiveness it almost makes it true when people say that everything depends on this election it’s very important that that not be true and the American system is built to make that less true not everything depends on any one election but the more power we hand over to the president and and the more the presidents think in terms of a kind of partisan Direction setting rather than securing stability the more that they damage our potential for cohesion I think there’s something similar to say about the courts in one sense courts obviously resolve disputes that’s what they do but the the federal courts are not meant to resolve the underlying disputes at the core of American political life they resolve disputes about what the law is not what the law should be and our real disputes our political disputes are of course about what the law should be those are resolved in Congress those are resolved by competition between Congress and the president they’re not resolved by the courts the role the courts have in advancing the cause of unity and cohesion is ultimately to secure the system to make sure that the various constitutional actors are playing the roles assigned to them in our Constitution and that nobody is doing an end run around the system not presidents not Congress but also not majorities right the courts enforce our basic rights the rights in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere in such a way that they they constrain majority power and they constrain the other actors in the system it’s only when the courts see that as their role that they can facilitate greater unity and cohesion I think the federal courts have actually gotten better at that in in the last uh generation or so and and especially in the last 10 years but it’s important that we see their role that way and not think of them as just another way to advance our policy objectives there are other places in the system to do that but that’s not what the courts are for right so you mentioned uh lowering the temperature during elections we obviously right in the middle of a campaign it’s it’s become a very interesting campaign a very contested election um and minute by minute you hear it’s the most important one in history as as you just said um but but I ionically as you point out in the book you how can stronger parties and and these contested elections actually be sources of unity yeah you know I started out saying that Coalition building is the skill we’ve forgotten and political parties exist above all to facilitate Coalition building um because of the nature of our system and especially the nature of presidential selection we’ve almost always had two parties um that’s largely because you don’t want more than two candidates in the election electoral college that tends to send things to the Congress and the house is not where the President should be chosen if we can help it so we’ve generally had two parties and that

means that each of them has to be a very Broad and messy Coalition and that actually is good for producing the kinds of politicians who are going to be good at Coalition building in the in the institutions of the Constitutional system too in Congress and elsewhere so broadly speaking the parties as institutions actually reduce partisanship ironically know because a political party has to get people elected in the Deep South and in the Northwest and so as an institution it needs to be broadly appealing it needs to give people room to make broad coalitional appeals and that does tend to lower the temperature of our politics part of the reason that things have gotten more partisan and and polarized in the last 25 years is that the parties have gotten weaker not stronger and they are now very weak as institutions because they’ve turned over a lot of their power to primary electorates so they’re not really in the business of of selecting candidates anymore they’re not really in the business of directing resources to campaigns money flows through different channels now the parties have much less of a role than they used to as institutions they’ve in a sense become Brands and they’re wielded by individual political actors rather than operating as Coalition builders that has been very bad for our system and I do think that both parties need to rethink the logic of the primary system system how do we get candidates who are likely to win general elections that is no longer the question that that the candidate selection process seems to be asking instead we’re asking how do we get candidates who are most satisfying to the most partisan people in our Coalition the 10% or so who vote in primaries I think that is the wrong question for our constitutional system and the parties have to think about how to strengthen themselves as institutions and in that way how to contribute to a more cohesive National political culture too right so it really seems like we’re appealing to the base uh and to the passions of of our bases uh rather than rather than the general elector rather than uh appealing to all Americans someone who might be a good public uh official yeah I mean I think our our our electoral politics now begin every election cycle by asking the question what do the most devoted voters in each party want or you might say what do the C iest people in America one right the 10% of people who vote in primaries and I’m one of them really care about politics a lot but they are not like the rest of the electorate and the party’s job is to win general elections so by starting every cycle by asking themselves what do the people who are going to vote anyway want um they’re making a mistake they’re hurting themselves and you can see it neither party has been successful really in the last quarter Century or so we’ve had two minority parties at the same time now for almost 30 years since the mid 1990s and neither of them can seem to get out of this they both think winning just barely 50% plus one voter is the only way to get anywhere but they’re mistaken

about that if you build a broader Coalition you can win a broader Victory but you do have to disappoint your primary voters some in doing that which means you have to think about how to choose candidates in a way that looks beyond only that very narrow electorate yeah in one more followup it just seems like each party has about two years to just kind of r their their agenda down everyone through before they’re voted out and then the other side does the same thing we’ve had no durable majority party which is very unusual in American history that’s how normally how this works and every time a party wins narrowly they persuade themselves that now we’re in a new political era and it’s going to belong to us and then two years later they lose everything and they somehow don’t see that this is not working that they have to think about how to change their own processes to get back to a place where we can have a durable majority for a generation at a time as American politics generally has um they can you know I think the first party to see its way out of this rut is going to do very well indeed um and be the next majority party in American life but at this point neither of them seems open to seeing it right right well final question uh ending on a on a very helpful note I think um so you argue and I think you’ve alluded to it already Unity is not unanimity it’s not the absence of disagreement it’s not even necessary L Tranquility or calm so what does greater unity in your view in in American politics and Society what would that actually look like yeah unanimity is certainly impossible uh in a free Society we are not always going to agree if you’ve ever gotten a group of people of any size together then you know that what they do is disagree um that’s fine that’s Freedom the question is how can we understand ourselves as one society as we work out differences about what we ought to be doing together we don’t do everything together but politics is about what shall we do and it is about working through disagreements about that question and so I think if we can see that Unity doesn’t mean thinking alike unity means acting together then we see that a more unified politics looks like a politics that addresses itself to tractable problems that is the problems where I can give you some and you can give me some and we can both in at the end of the day think we’ve gotten something significant um and to do it in a way that involves negotiation and Coalition building that’s what a unified politics looks like it’s not a politics where we stop disagreeing with each other it’s a politics where we start disagreeing constructively but rather than talking about each other we’re talking to each other and we’re working through the institutions to facilitate various modes of negotiated policy outcomes that’s not impossible that’s what the life of democracy looks like there are many examples that we can point to in American life we don’t do it enough now and we’ve got to ReDiscover the mode of political action that looks like that to me that’s the reason to become reacquainted with the American

Constitution and that kind of reacquaintance is ultimately the purpose of this book right great so uh more Aristotle and more Madison more Lincoln and and less social media how about that so we can get back to having a beer with each other and about politics so it sounds great well you’ve all thank you very much for uh joining us and discussing this important topic congratulations on your brilliant new book highly recommended American Covenant are you a young person already making a difference in your community take your impact further with the my impact Challenge from the Bill of Rights Institute in this contest for us or US military B teens age 13 to 19 the my impact challenge is your chance to share your project and gain National recognition with up to $10,000 for your project and $40,000 in total prizes for students and teachers your efforts can reach New Heights the my impact challenge is your platform to Showcase how you’re making change happen visit myimpact challenge.org to learn more and get started that was a great conversation between Tony and Yuval lvin I was especially interested in the distinction between unity and unanimity and I really enjoyed how they discussed how every layer of government has a responsibility for that Unity whether it’s Congress the president the parties every layer of Civil Society takes on an aspect to make sure that those freedoms are preserved so now we’re going to take a moment and go to Stan swim and Eric Meyer publisher of the Maran County record if you’re not familiar with this story it is a story ripped from the headlines about our first Amendment right to freedom of the press you know our constitution values free exchange of ideas yet protecting that freedom has always required individuals to stand up to Authority Eric Meyer publisher of the Marian County Reporter shares how he stood up for freedom of the press we’re going to explore the role of Journalism in our democracy the challenges it faces and the courage to defend it after the ratification of our constitution our nation was very quick to add 10 Amendments and the very first one of those at least as we have them listed Now deals with the freedom of the press how we manage information the exchange of ideas in our society those words have been important throughout our nation’s history they don’t execute themselves they don’t just magically mean that everything is going to go okay and I’m joined today by someone who has paid a certain price personally and demonstrated some real courage in assertion of that First Amendment right with his local newspaper the Maran County record Eric Meyer is the publisher of that paper and it’s my pleasure to interview him today Eric

welcome and thank you for taking the time to speak to our audience thanks Stan appreciate it journalism seems to have been a lifelong passion for you how did that start oh gez I’ve been a news nerd as long as I’ve been alive really uh but I didn’t decide I really wanted to go into it until my senior year in college when I actually saw what it did while I was editor my student newspaper but I’m a third generation journalist my grandmother was one of the first who sort of escaped the pink collar ghetto at Daily newspapers and was out of the women’s section and covering real news and I used to go down and visit her in The Newsroom of the witch Tai Eagle before I knew how to read and write but I saw all these people down there grabbing these pieces of paper and these big fat pencils and scrolling stuff on the paper and then going over and W putting it into a pneumatic tube and sending it off to the composing room so I went one day while I was visiting her and she was busy writing her story I went through a waste basket and found a bunch of old copy and marked it all up even though I couldn’t read and sent it up to the composing room and eventually the composing room Foreman comes down and says what are we supposed to do with this stuff but that that’s that was the start of things even as a little kid uh one of my favorite toys was was I had a block of wood that I’d stapled a piece of string around and a long string on the bottom was my lavalier microphone and as a kid growing up in Kansas uh one of the things you did all summer was spend half the summer in the basement being chased Away by tornadoes and I was fascinated by these guys who got on television and and told us how to save our lives by getting in the basement and I thought you know that’s that’s kind of cool that’s that’s what Superman and Batman and Captain Kirk and gi. Joe are doing and and I wanted to play that too so I did things like when I was playing by myself I made news sets with various different things and it continued on i s sort of lost my interest in broadcast at some point and the first term paper we had to write in school when you have to learn how to do footnotes and what all that kind of stuff was uh mine was on Modern newspaper design uh so I I was I was my father was in the business he was was running this newspaper as a matter of fact my grandmother was in the business she retired and and came to work at this newspaper uh and I didn’t I was always planning though to go to college and go off and be a lawyer at an MBA and be some corporate some thank God I never did it I would have hated that but uh uh I became editor of my campus newspaper and seeing the effect that journalism had on an actual Community firsthand convinced me this is what I really wanted to do forever so I decided when I was a senior in college that H forget the law school forget the MBA stuff let’s go off and be a journalist can you remember any particular stories that stand out from your time as a college journalist where

where you really saw the impact and and the bug bit we probably the best thing we ever did was uh one of the nice things about college journalism is that very often you have lots of reporters so I was running uh as the campus editor before I was editor-in Chief I had 75 reporters uh there’s stuff you can do with 75 reporters that you can’t do in most newsrooms and so we sent people out to cover all sorts of Beats that we didn’t really we weren’t weren’t really interested in the the public school system in town we really didn’t care about that but one of the reporters came back with an interesting story uh of a a special skin Ian Behavior Analysis uh Head Start program in which children were literally being abused uh they were AB they were forcing these kids to get tokens if they wanted to go to the bathroom and so they’d sit them in the corner and they were wetting their pants and if the parents complained about it they’d threaten the kids and there were rumors that they were they were going out and faking their expense accounts and it was University professors who were involved in this and we took a huge number of reporters as I recall uh my associate editor and I Jeff Stinson we spent spring break I mean spring break we stayed on campus to go through Dusty files of expense records from this program and then calling up every place they said they’d gone and asked whether they actually had gone there and we found about $25,000 worth of expense vouchers that they hadn’t put through and this is back in the early 70s it someone who was interning at a Kansas City TV station wdf and somebody who was working for the NPR station on campus K andu had also become aware of this and we decided to pull our efforts and we did this sort of early multimedia you know cross media platform we we timed everything to come out all on the same day uh did what was good for broadcast on broadcast what was good for print on print you know all these other things back in the 70s and we got two people sent to prison uh and that’s kind of when you feel you know cool we spoke up for these kids that and these parents that were that were having trouble that we that we being abused by the system and we got something done about it and you know that that’s a feeling that you can’t turn your back on journalism when you see something like that happen well well let’s shift to a compelling story that had you in the middle instead of you as the reporter it seemed like this should never happen in America but in August of last year 2023 police raided your home and the newspaper that you own there the Marian County record The Raid was condemned by Free Press Advocates and journalists from around the world and seen as an

effort to intimidate your paper into not publishing a story can you walk us through that day what was that surprise like for you and what was going through your mind it was totally unexpected I I was I was sitting at home at the time uh I lived with my 98-year-old mother uh I’d come down here to Kansas during covid uh come on spring break from the University of Illinois and I couldn’t go back to Illinois because of covid uh so I taught my classes from actually where I’m sitting right now uh using zoom and whatever else uh and I did that for the rest of that semester and did it for the next year and somewhere along the line I said H enough with this online class crap it doesn’t work well but I’m close enough to retirement age I’ll just retire and a stayed in Maran so I’m staying with my 98-year-old mother and it was getting close to time her Meals on Wheels would arrive at about 11 o’clock in the morning and I was waiting for her Meals on Wheels to arrive because it was usually cold and I didn’t get up for her uh but uh got a knock on the door there were a couple of couple of cops out there that were executing a search warrant and uh I told them at the time that this is uh probably not legal what you’re doing and that the we have information about the police chief which we hadn’t published and we think this is just retaliation for that it turns out it was probably was a much more serious retaliation than just that uh because they also raided the home of a city council woman that same morning uh who was an opponent of the mayor and we had covered her opposition to the mayor uh and we believe that it wasn’t just the police chief but it was also the mayor who was out trying to get us and trying to either embarrass us or in the case of the mayor he had said previously that uh the only way I can get rid of her because he tried to get her recalled and couldn’t get it uh she on the other hand had had over override campaigns on some stuff he tried to publish and been very successful with them or tried to enact but we we thought that uh this was an attempt by the mayor to enlist the police chief and some others in a campaign to embarrass us get her convicted of a crime throw us out of business prevent us from publishing there were discussions at the time about you know well who’s going to be able to publish the legal notices when after they’re raided and and we can’t quite prove all of this yet but we’ve heard enough of it that we think it was fairly broad reaching uh but they rated our office and I tried to call they took immediately took my cell phone they took my laptop they forbade me to touch the desktop computer in the place and I

wanted to call a lawyer well I had his number in my laptop I had it in my cell phone I had it on the desktop and I also had it posted actually it’s still there it’s right on this wall over here next to my desk uh and I now got more than one lawyer’s number over there but uh uh they wouldn’t let us I went down to the newspaper office they wouldn’t let us in the office as it turned out they they stood at my mother’s house for two and a half hours and eventually seven of them came to my mother’s house to take her computer away they searched her basement thinking there might be a file server down in the basement she’s like there’s no file server in the basement there’s clutter and I’m embarrassed and I don’t want you to go down there but they went down there anyway uh they took all sorts of things they took everything that we could had to produce the paper with at that time they threw our staff out of The Newsroom uh I came down to The Newsroom and couldn’t get in uh and I finally went to a neighbor uh who lives not far away from here and I said can I borrow your phone and it turns out he had an old flip phone uh uh and borrow your iPad to look up our lawyer’s number so we could call the lawyer and see what was going on but they packed up all our material they took our file server they took our backup hard drives they took we we had backups on Blu-ray discs they took all the computers that had Blu-ray players on them so we couldn’t get our any of our backups we didn’t even have you know the newspaper has a name plate up at the top that says what’s your name we didn’t have that we didn’t have that name plate anymore uh uh and we had to produce a paper they eventually returned all this doc all this to us about two hours after we produced that first paper afterward they could have returned it a little earlier and it might have made it easier for us but they didn’t uh and uh they accused us of identity theft now the the the sad thing is that we received a tip well actually to up just a little bit uh we’d been invited to a meeting a public forum by a congressman and got a personal invitation to it and we went there and the owner of the coffee shop threw us out didn’t want any media in the in the event and threw us out and had the police chief throw us out in response to this a woman who knew the coffee shop owner sent us what she thought was some dirt on the coffee shop own that she had been driving for 20 years without a valid license because she’d had a drunk driving conviction that she’d tried to have diversion put on to and never completed the diversion agreement and the person who gave us the information said not only has she been doing this for 20 years local law enforcement are well aware of it and have done nothing

to enforce it so our first thought was we didn’t want to be Dan rathered we didn’t want to have a fake document in our possession that wasn’t real so we wanted to verify was it real document so we asked her how she got it and she told us how she got it and we went off and tried to find it and we couldn’t find it there so we eventually called up the the State Department of Motor Vehicles and said well how do you get this and they told us how they gave us the instructions on how you get the document and you know they they knew what we were doing they knew why we were doing it uh so we got the document we looked at it was legit but we found from another source that really what was going on here this had probably been leaked by the woman’s estranged husband uh who was arguing in their divorce case that he should get all their cars because she didn’t have a valid driver’s license and we said to ourselves this is not a story we want to run so but we were concerned that cops were not arresting her so I sent off a note to the sheriff and the police chief saying we’ve received this document we aren’t going to do anything with it but there was an allegation made by the woman who sent it to us who had connections with law enforcement she’d been a dispatcher her husband is a retired state trooper uh that the people the law enforcement was ignoring it and that she might have obtained this record in some way other than the way she told us she did uh we did not know at the time that the city council woman had also received a copy of this from the same woman and the woman the restor her was asking for a a a uh liquor permit to sell alcohol at her restaurants and the city council member sent a copy to the city administrator saying does this affect her license application that she has this pending drunk driving conviction and should she be getting a liquor license and the city administrator said uh now that’s for the state to decide we don’t look into that issue and I’ve instructed the police department not to follow up on it the police chief didn’t receive our note until he he’d gone home for the weekend he saw it the first thing the Monday morning after that and at some point there was some discussion made that involved City Council Members the only way they could overrule the city administrator would be if the mayor overruled him and said start an investigation uh the police chief started an investigation it was a shoddy investigation uh one of the police officers called the state and said said did somebody access this record and they said yeah there’s a loophole they can get this record through and and he didn’t even bother to ask who the person was what their title was he got false information it says and right after that uh the the restaurant owner access accessed this we have a record that that was accessed under her name so obviously

they had faked her name rather than using the name of the reporter which is what would was on the request for the document well it turns out that all the transaction for a day are loaded as a batch once in the morning so every transaction that had been made that day showed up as sequential like two minutes apart uh we and it was different IP numbers it was it was it was the ex-husband of the woman making the request so real shoty reporting they rush out and get a search warrant and uh wait a few days uh how the search warrant the county attorney said he didn’t read it the uh judge who wasn’t even the judge for here she’s a Magistrate Judge from a different County uh approved it we don’t know why the judge from this County wasn’t here and didn’t approve it uh we’ve asked whether she ever saw it they won’t tell us whether she ever saw the request the we there was a complaint issued not by us but by somebody else against the Magistrate Judge for approving the search warrant the state sent a note back saying well judges have almost total immunity to their action uh and we don’t say that we would have agreed with pursuing the warrant but we have sent her advice that in the future we recommend that she reads things before she signs them uh and they there was a complaint made against the county attorney and it was sent back that said well he didn’t do anything wrong he has immunity uh most County attorneys actually read search warrants before they send them to judges but they’re not required to so that’s okay uh so uh kind of a catch22 situation in trying to get culpability for this uh so they raid our office and take all of our stuff and we put out a paper uh eventually the County Attorney prodded by some State officials decides on the Monday after the raid that oh shoot there wasn’t probable cause for this search to ever exist and so he makes a request but waits till Wednesday to do it to uh remove the search warrants and return all the in the devices to us they had made a copy of our hard drive which he didn’t want to return to us it was something that was added to the seized inventory after they gave us a copy of it we only found it accident and then they didn’t want to return it to us and uh they started going through well we should have the Judge review it in camera and then a judge finally sent down and said read my original note it said return everything now so for the judge they they actually smashed the hard drive uh and we had the sheriff and the unders Sheriff with a hammer and chisel come in and take the little hard drive and smash it into little pieces so we have a bag of pieces of a hard drive that is the return of that uh and thereafter it’s just been a roller coaster of uh of legal Affairs and and uh still pending likely to be pending for years to come

lawsuits yeah it’s a remarkable story and I’ve going through all that details sobering in itself what happened inside you just as as you’re watching all this go on what were you thinking as kind of a a what animated your actions at that point you’re not supposed to do this uh so I told him at the time I said I said two things to him that were a little perect I said this is going to be a huge lawsuit you’re going to be sued and you’re going to be on the front page of the New York Times and they laughed at that of course they were on the front page of the New York Times but they got a huge lawsuit against them uh multiple huge lawsuits against them but basically you go you you re revert to your training and you you do what you’re supposed to do which is you orally challenge them you do not physically challenge them otherwise they will try to have you arrested by the way they tried to have my mother arrested my 98-year-old mother arrested uh and I didn’t mention that part of the story uh uh which I really should have um my mother was so distraught about this she the the two and a half hours she had to sit there with the cops and watch them ransacking her house she would not eat that night she would not drink water she would not go to bed she sat in a chair in the living room till about 6:00 in the morning and then finally went to bed I let her sleep till a little afternoon and I woke her up at that point and said you really you didn’t e anything yesterday you need to have something indeed uh all through the the rage she kept telling them she was very get out of my house uh she said some said some great lines that the people have appreciated uh uh you know she was telling the cops do you have a mother do you love your mother does your mother love you uh and uh what you’re doing is wrong and Gusto Hitler tactic she she really laid into it uh and she one time approached one of the cops with her walker and the cop involved wanted to have her charged with interfering with law enforcement aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer for attacking her with her wet Walker but we’ve got video of it I mean one of the nice things is we didn’t have to wait for body cam I had a camera in that house in case she fell or something and so we had video ourselves of what went on in there and she’s not threatening them uh but the cop by the way who threatened who threatened to have her arrested he’s now the interim police chief in Maran so we’re not rid of these people the the the the notion of what did we do at the time that’s automatic we put out a newspaper we took us two all nighters uh we just did what we’re going to do that that’s programming that’s that’s muscle memory you just do it because that’s what you’re going to do the if there’s

heroism if there’s things Courage the courage is we put out the paper last week with the same Sheriff the same county attorney the same judge the the interim police chief now who not only did that but he was the one in searching our Newsroom who went through a reporter’s desk a reporter who wasn’t even here when the identity theft happened she was sick that week had nothing to do with the story he search searched all of her files and found she was the one who had had the dirt on the police chief that we didn’t use because we couldn’t get documentary sources we only had two sources who were Rel related to each other we actually had more than two but they were all related and we weren’t going to run it until we found an independent source that said that this guy who had been the police captain in Kansas City earning $120,000 a year suddenly decides he wants to go to Marian to be the police chief for $60,000 a year doesn’t really make a lot of sense Until you realize that he was pending demotion for sexual improprieties and other things that he had done at the Kansas City Police Department and we had that information we just didn’t have it nailed down to the point that we thought we could publish it but in going through the desks the guy who’s now the interim police chief found that file called the police chief over so that he could read it and page one of that was the print out of the LinkedIn profile of our main source so he now knew who gave the information to him so anyway back to my mother she was I got her up at around noon on Saturday and uh said you haven’t eaten she went to the bathroom she came back to bed and sitting on the edge of her bed and I said you want to eat here in let me make some breakfast for you get you some coffee get you something or other you want to have it here in the in your bedroom you want to go into the family room you want to eat at the kitchen table she says I don’t know I don’t feel too dropped over dead she died in the middle of that sentence uh the coroner came and said it was the stress of the raid uh other experts have described it as broken heart syndrome it’s fairly common among elderly people that if they believe that she’d worked at the newspaper for 60 years she was still working there at the time 98 years old she did a column of memories for us uh if you believe that everything about your life was meaningless and you’re an old person you often die of sudden cardiac arrest and that’s what happened to her she had spent most of the evening where are all the good people where are all the good people who are supposed to stop this well they came it just took them a few days to get there we we got huge outpouring of support uh you mentioned earlier that that all the media organizations rallied around us and we appreciate that we’re very grateful for that but that’s not what we’re extremely

grateful for it wasn’t the media organizations rallying around us that we cared about it was the people we heard from tens of thousands of just average ordinary citizens you know steam Fitters union of Executives politicians law enforcement officers in a very large number uh just you know retirees School teachers nurses whatever tens of thousands of them sent us supportive email messages thousands of them actually subscribe to our newspaper from all over the United States so we we have our circulation tripled uh as a result of this thing uh most of them subscribing online only but uh and 100% of the notes we received were supporting and they were coming from everywhere on the political Spectrum I I like to recount the story that I was going through them one day and I never got a chance to answer all of them because it was 10,000 of them you can’t do it and and we’d lost our computer so most of this was like ganged up in this big pile of messages that we finally got to weeks and weeks later but I was going through it weeks and weeks later and I was looking you know clicking next to the things and I’m so sorry for what they did to you that must have be the damn Republicans did it and I clicked next and it says I’m so sorry for what they did to you it must have been those damn Democrats I mean it was coming from every side of the political Spectrum conservatives liberals Democrats Republicans and they were all saying the same thing and these days to find an issue on which people of both parties and all political aspects agree on is is rare but they were agreeing on that this was wrong this was just wrong I think there’s a there there’s a sentiment of the public there’s a segment of the public that probably thinks journalism is out an outmoded concept and it’s technologically out ofate and it’s which none of which is true uh and that it lies and you know fake news fake news fake news uh but even the fake news people thought this was wrong uh and fundamentally I think they understand that there’s an important role that the media that news coverage plays in in democracy and that this is just not American I I we were lucky enough one of the awards we received is the Maria ressa award for courage in journalism from University of Maryland Maria ressa the Nobel prizewinning journalist from the Philippines was there and I got to have lunch with her and she had been following our story from Manila and I I asked her enough questions I know she listened to it on the first day before my mother died then she’d listen to it on the second day after my mother died and she’d really been following it very closely she said to me says you know this the most discouraging thing about it was that we in the rest of the world had always looked to the United States as our Beacon of Liberty and hope and

this is the kind of crap that goes on in our third world countries and here it’s happening in the United States and that was very depressing to us and I I’d had a grad student from Egypt in fact we’d done a paper together for a convention about the repressive control of the media in Egypt and how the media hadj adjusted to it little tactic they called incremental reporting they’d report a little tiny bit of a story and they wait a while and report a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and they had to do it slowly otherwise the government would come crack in down on them and raid their Newsroom well we did a paper on that and thought how awful that was well that’s what happened in Kansas that’s what happened in Marian Kansas does it happen everywhere it happens more than you’d think one of the unusual things about us is we’re not the only place this has happened to we’re the place you’ve heard about you’ve heard about it partly because we are a little different than other places you know I don’t take a salary here I work 80 hours a week and don’t get paid but you know but I’m retired I’ve got plenty of income I don’t I don’t need this this is not why I’m doing this is not my livelihood and I will not object to somebody who is whose livelihood depends on it that they you know they got to feed their kids they got to get them through college they they can’t challenge everything as fully as you need to uh I’ve been in that position I I remember sitting in a in a news in a newsroom when an editor was making a decision that I didn’t think was good and that my boss at the time didn’t think it was good I was a new father who had a six week old baby and the my boss said well if you do this I’m going to resign and he did and I’m it’s like looking at me and okay I can’t resign right now you know I just I just can’t do it but now this use the the the the the the tail is turned on this I’m now in the position where I don’t have to you know somebody wants to boycott me and put no ads in this newspaper that’s fine we’ll live with it we’ll figure we’ll figure out a way to make it work because my financial livelihood doesn’t depend on it and uh so you’re hearing about this one a little more than you might hear about some others well you you put together that issue right after the The Raid happened and you you got it out anyway with kind of a headline that went around the world seized but not silenced yeah that just that that was a headline that just came to me I don’t know why uh I’m I’m a longtime headline writer so I I come up with headlines but uh uh it was important to establish the notion that that we were not giving up there are some other sayings that uh uh you know we I I said at the time we’re going to publish come hell or high water uh there’s no way if if if if we had to take Post-it notes and handr write the news on it and send

them on people’s doors we were going to publish a newspaper that way that week there just was no no way we weren’t going to publish uh you can’t be you know when you’re confronted with bullies you can either bow to them or you can stand up to them and most of the time if you stand up to bullies they go away and you just have to realize that there’s a minute that you that’s going to be difficult when you’re standing up to them but standing up to him is a lot better than than rolling over because the next time it’s going to be something worse and the next time you know they want your lunch money this time and they’re going to want your they’re going to want your car and your house the next time uh so you have to kind of stand up to bullies and that’s what we wanted to do I mean that’s what newspapers are supposed to do that’s our role in democracy well you’ve certainly set an example and if if it’s all right I’d like to wrap up with a couple of questions about that example and your thoughts for a rising generation who might be interested in in the path that you’ve taken you’ve had a chance to teach journalism in a college setting what were the most important couple of lessons that you wanted students to absorb above anything else when you taught I’ll tell you the mission of Journalism is important that you’re out there you know it was it was offered originally as a as an insult to Chicago journalists that you you comfort The Afflicted and afflict the comfortable that was actually supposed to be an insult but it’s actually a pretty good definition of what we do in journalism uh you have to have a soul you have to care about the community you’re living in uh one of the reasons why journalism is typically attracts more underrepresented groups to it than most other professions do is because I think a lot of those people in those groups have that passion that they need they need they understand that there’s a community that needs their services and they want to be heard right they want to be heard they want they you need to give a voice to the voiceless and and make sure that this is not stency and most people don’t understand this who are not in the business I I am very Jeffersonian I believe that if the public has all the information most of the time they’ll make the right decision now not all the time and it might not be the decision that I would make and honestly I don’t care most people don’t think that’s true they think well you WR editorials and you care what the what they’re going to do well I care but I’m not trying to push an opinion down anybody’s throat I just want you to have all the information make up your mind yourselves you might be right you might be wrong but at least you knew that you had the information going in uh and it’s important for people to for students to understand that that’s what you’re doing the challenge that most students face is the ability to go up to people and ask

them questions to be willing to look stupid to ask a dumb question that you don’t you know you have to and to talk to people who aren’t like you I mean that that’s but that’s also the beauty of it I mean part of the and go to a town that you don’t know anything about I’ve got a job applicant coming in next week who who’s graduated from the University of Chicago not exactly a a a major Melting Pot who’d gone to a very prestigious private school in New York uh as for undergrad lived in New York City has probably never seen a town as small as this uh he’s coming out to to to come to a town like this that will be good for him if he comes to this town it’d be good to experience a place that you’ve never felt like to to be part of the fly overstate when you’ve flown over it so many times uh or to go to some other place to go interview people uh I remember interviewing somebody in in a small town and and they were so proud of their accomplishments he’s in management and I said well what what are you managing I’m the assistant manager at Burger King well you know I mean but in the mindset of the people involved you have to put yourself in those shoes and understand that’s a big accomplishment for those people that were there doing that uh and just being a sociologist you know being being the the the Margaret me of the J of of your Society just for your own personal edification I mean I understand this is a time at which liberal arts education is not looked on with a great degree of support people are renaming liberal arts colleges as arts colleges rather than liberal because they don’t like the word liberal is to them a negative term uh understand that knowledge is knowledge is important and this is the business this is the business you’re in in journalism is the knowledge business uh finding information and you’ve got to be willing to go up to people who you don’t know who may look scary or may look intimidating or may look like you don’t like them uh and ask them a question that they may find stupid and and but do enough research so that you don’t do that intentionally you’re not just going up and say and you know what do you think about global warming to a scientist who does studies on global warming do do some research and figure it out and revel in that research one of the little things I love learned one day teaching I was making reference I said I don’t know whether anybody knows about this but there’s this stupid show on TV it’s on one of the Discovery Channels or something it’s called how it’s made and it’s a Canadian show and it’s like spends five minutes about you know why potato chip come and the bags are only

half full and and how you make corn flakes and and the people around the class they’d all watched it all the good journalism students had watched it because it’s sort of this meaningless knowledge that that you can get quickly and and maybe you’re going to use it someplace in the future but it’s it’s the love of acquiring information and then sharing it with other people and if you’ve got that you need to be in journalism uh because that’s a job that that’s what it does that that’s the the joy of telling people things that they didn’t know uh and finding out things that are important for them to know and then letting them know and taking that thrill and figuring out at the end of the day you’ve done more for democracy than most of the people who are elected to offices have done and uh that’s a good feeling it’s it’s a really good feeling and even though I was fascinated with journalism I didn’t get that till I was a senior in college till I went out there and actually did journalism in a community that I was an NL my campus newspaper uh and I recommend to students that they they get that experience they work in a community that they’re part of that they can feel at coming out and they’ll be hooked they’ll be hooked for life it’s not about writing it’s not about photography it’s not about design it’s not about being you know having the best hairo and doing the the the news on camera uh it’s it’s about what you do for democracy well I think that’s a a perfect note to end on and Eric you you and your mother and and what you’ve all done together at the Maran County record certainly I think are are going to leave a legacy for our country and its Legacy of freedom and the Humane Legacy what we share together as neighbors and citizens so I want to thank you for what you’ve shared with us today and especially for um sticking with it on a and don’t forget to stick around at the end of our program where we’ll be announcing the national Civics teacher of the year we are so grateful to all of our partners and sponsors including smart pass who sat down with Justin Goldstein my colleague to talk about their sponsorship this year hi I’m Justin Goldstein I’m director of corporate relations at the Bill of Rights in Institute uh I’m thrilled to have Peter Lewis CEO of smart pass join us today um VRI is honored to have Smart pass as uh our official sponsor of the national Civics teacher the Year award Peter welcome and uh if you could just tell our audience of teachers and students and school districts out there a little bit about yourself and smart past sure no thanks so much for having me uh Justin and a little bit about smart path so you know I’ll give the quick you know back story then kind of get into how the actual

product works around 6 years ago at this point uh my assistant principal of my high school came into our coding class and was like Hey I have this idea for a digital Hall Pass students are going to the bathroom or nurse’s office or just wandering around the hallways every single period throughout their school day and there is no way to stop it our school had just gotten Chromebooks that year uh so as just you know techy high schoolers my co-founder and I we were like hey there has to be a better way for all of this so we scrap together the first version of smart pass uh just a very basic you know when a student raises their hand to go to the bathroom they open up their Chromebook they say hey I’m going to the you know second floor bathroom a countdown timer starts and then the teacher from the front of the room can see that hey this student has been out for five minutes right now and when the student comes back they just click end on that stop pass um and when we rolled it out to you know the earliest version of smart pass we rolled it out to our school teachers loved it because they had visibility on what was actually happening throughout the school day um and it actually really reduced the amount of time that students were just wandering around classes every single period um we kept on working as spass just as like a side project all throughout college and then postco as schools started coming back there was just an uptick in student behavior issues and then almost every single school went one to one so it was like right place the right time we went from around 50 schools to over a thousand schools in about a year absolutely exploded and we’ve just been growing smart pass just as quickly as we possibly can what would you say inspired smart past to sponsor the national Civics teacher of the year award I think uh I mean helping Educators is really just at the heart of everything we do uh and like it it brings you know all you know our entire company who you know has a lot of even former Educators some who were using smart pass at their buildings come um and you know there are tons of other smart pass tons of other you know sponsorship opportunities out there but we wanted something that you know actually directly helps teachers and then just raises awareness for all just the amazing work that they do um I’d also say like you know this sponsorship just helps us build those stronger connections with teachers uh we’re always looking for ways of like how can we become more and more and more involved in the in the classroom this past summer our student fellows travel to Washington DC and the Streets of Philadelphia to ask some questions about our constittution tional principles and things that they really cared about let’s see what they had to say I’m Mark Roselle I serve as the dean of the Char School of policy and government at George Mason University in Virginia and my background is in US government and politics I’m a political Scientist by training and I’m absolutely delighted to have this opportunity to answer questions by the student fellows of the Bill of Rights Institute so let’s get right to the first

question hi my name is GA and I have a question what are some landmarks Supreme Court cases that have significantly impacted our interpretation of the Bill of Rights that’s a great question Jenna thank you the Bill of Rights is a Cornerstone of American democracy outlining fundamental rights and Liberties the interpretation of these rights has evolved significantly though through Supreme Court cases to take a few examples in Tinker versus Mo back in 1969 the Court ruled that students wearing black armbands to protest the war in Vietnam were engaging in pure speech which is a form of symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment so this case affirmed that students do not lose their constitutional rights to freedom of speech when they enter School emphasizing the importance of protecting free expression another important case Terry versus Ohio 1968 addressed the fourth amendment’s protection against un un reasonable searches and seizures now the court found that a stop and frisk by police is considered search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment however it ruled that this practice is allowed under certain circumstances especially in crime prevention so the decision recognized the balance between individual rights and the need for law enforcement to maintain Public Safety allowing evidence seized during such stops to be accepted in court so these cases demonstrate how the Supreme Court shapes the interpretation of the Bill of Rights hi my name is vishas Swami and I’m a first year fellow here with the Bill of Rights Institute my question for you today is how do groups like Grassroots movements and special interest groups have and influencing how the Bill of Rights is protected and interpreted on a day-to-day basis well thank you for that question Vish let me answer Grassroots movements special interest groups and lobbyists play significant roles in influencing how the Bill of Rights is protected and interpreted on a day-to-day basis Grassroots movements such as the Civil Rights Movement the women’s suffrage movement have long been at the Forefront of efforts to expand and defend our constitutional rights such as the right to vote now these movements often Garner support and momentum through advocacy campaigns organized demonstrations and protest and encouraging Civic engagement within communities in America special interest groups typically advocate for specific rights such as the rights to free speech and due process groups such as the American civil liberties Union the National Rifle Association have been influential and shaping judicial interpretations of the Bill of Rights through litigation and lobbying efforts lastly lobbyists work directly with lawmakers to push for legislation that strengthens or weakens various constitutional protections based based on their interests hi y’all my name is Anthony

Kim and I’m from New York and my question to you is how does the Bill of Rights affect the daily lives of American citizens thank you for that question Anthony all 10 Amendments included in the Bill of Rights affect the daily lives of American citizens the Bill of Rights protects basic rights that American citizens are entitled to even if you don’t realize it on a day-to-day basis the First Amendment may play the biggest role in your life the first amendment protects the right of American citizens to exercise Free Speech free practice of religion freedom of the press so that means in day-to-day life Americans can communicate and speak how they would like without fear of government punishment it also means that the government does not censor newspapers and media Outlets Additionally the first amendment guarantees that Americans of all faiths can worship as they please or not not at all without interference from the government in more serious circumstances the sixth amendment becomes crucial if you are ever arrested this amendment guarantees your right to a fair trial this includes the right to be informed of the charges against you the right to a speedy and public trial the right to an impartial jury and the right to have legal representation the sixth amendment ensures that the justice system operates transparently and fairly these rights are designed to protect individuals from abuse of power by the government and to ensure that Justice is administered fairly these Liberties protected by the Bill of Rights are fundamental to American life but it’s important to remember that not all countries guarantee such rights in many parts of the world people do not have the same freedoms of speech press religion or the same legal protections if accused of a crime for example the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights are a key part of what makes the United States unique in its commitment to individual freedoms and Justice hi my name is Peter Kennedy and I’m from Westchester Pennsylvania and my question for you is why is civil disagreement important and how can we simultaneously prevent political polarization in our communities great question Peter Civic disagreement is important in a healthy democracy because it allows people to express different opinions and engage in debates that can lead to important policy changes better decision-making and increased political participation it is essential for a functioning democracy to respect and encourage Civic disagreement to allow for the inclusion of diverse opinions and prevent the marginalization of minority voices in the Democratic process in the United States the form of government plays a role in providing the guide rails for civic disagreement in

the federals papers for example James Madison argued that a large Republic would be better able to control the effects of factions that is groups of citizens with different interests because the diversity of opinions and interests would prevent any single faction from dominating Madison believed that the competition of ideas in a larger public would lead to more refined and balanced decisions why is civic education so important thank you for your question Naomi civic education is important for helping to Foster and developed informed and engaged citizens civic education helps teach people about their individual rights how government works how they can be active responsible citizens by understanding the structure of government how laws are made and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution people can be empowered to take an active role in our democracy so this knowledge Fosters and helps students understand the importance of voting staying informed about political issues contributing to the community Through service and Civic engagement inside and outside of the classroom Civics education encourages critical thinking this helps people to analyze and understand complex societal issues and reinforces the idea that each person has the power to make a difference so I think that comes to the end of all of our conclusions I just want to thank the students for their excellent questions and encourage them to continue their studies in American government and politics I really appreciate your interest in this topic you are the future and I feel very good about it getting to know you through these opportunities to answer your questions thank you the Bill of Rights Institute student Fellowship is a really wonderful opportunity for high school juniors and seniors to create a community really of young people from across the country we select 20 young people from our application pool which opens this October and they are invited to come with us on a intellectual Civic Adventure we meet monthly to talk about important ideas and what’s meaningful to them and then at the end of the summer we all come together in a Civic City usually it’s Washington DC or Philadelphia and it’s completely free for students so I recommend you if you’re a young person or if you know a young person who’s going to be a junior or senior this upcoming year apply today and we’d love to see you in the Bill of rats Institute student Fellowship absolutely and speaking of inspiring I had the opportunity to go down to Montello recently where our president David Bob sat down with Jane kamensky who is the president at monello and they had a conversation about Thomas Jefferson his relationship with John Adams in the nature of Civic friendship so let’s take a look and see what they can teach us today as we think about how it is it overcome

disagreement Dr Jane kamensky thank you so much for joining the Bill of Rights today so happy to be here David thanks for coming down to Montello it’s a pleasure to be here you’ve been with Montello as president since early 2024 can you tell us just a little bit about your journey to joining this institution and how you got here sure happy to do that so I I left the classroom to come down to um a much larger and in in many ways more public classroom I had been in research one institutions in higher ed for three decades when the search firm looking for a new president CEO for monello reached out and um one of the things that I had been doing in my University teaching was looking to build two-way Bridges between Scholars and teachers and the general public um uh around questions of historical and Civic importance and this felt like a way to answer that call at scale excellent you know one of the things that I’m intrigued by your background is that you’ve written three biographies I believe seven books total award-winning you note in one of your biographies that writing such is like a portrait and you’re writing about a portrait artist could you just tell us a little bit about the craft of writing a biography sure and and Montello is a biograph site and one of the things that I love about the genre is the the ability to take large abstract questions questions about huge historical forces um and Route them through one person’s life and think about the ways that we make history as individuals but also that history makes us and that always is a dynamic process um I think it works uh in similar ways for great men and women and for ordinary people like me um we’re products of our time and we shape our time through individual action um I’m an accidental biographer uh the first biography I wrote started out as a history of coffee consumption in the United States and I found that um the stories were sort of routing through one place and then um from one place to one individual and I found that kind of Life and Times SL times and life genre genre of biography a way to open up big questions um and that is precisely what monello does right it’s the home of uh it’s the home of Thomas Jefferson and the family members who lived with him in the house and the enslaved people who built the place and made it run um so it’s biographical and it’s also a cohort uh study um of people who didn’t necessarily want to be together and I think there’s no story about the American founding and the ongoing working out of what it means to live in a republic that you can’t see through

the eyes of those people um looking at each other looking at the world um looking backwards looking forwards so I believe in biography as an Enterprise um I’m also interested in it as an ethical Enterprise right you you um you want to write somebody about somebody in ways that are profoundly true and evidence-based and also that would allow them to recognize themselves right um so so to me as a biographer to get somebody right means that you’re bringing the analytic lens of your own moment but also thinking um if uh John Singleton Copley my artist read this or his mother um read it would she recognize her son I’m I’m not limited to her um uh or his worldview but I want to I want to think through them in a way um that uh that has the Integrity of um as close to belonging to their world as one could get that that person might recognize themsel uh in your portraiture one of the challenges I can imagine is you’re doing this kind of accidental or serendipitous and then it becomes intentional is that there’s an enormous uh amount of research that you can do for anybody in this process of writing a biography how do you know when you’re done oh I mean the I always think of that scene at the end of as batt’s historical novel possession where the characters go to their graves concealing a crucial secret that the um historians who are our protagonists literary Scholars who are our protagonists never learn um so it’s never done right like you you accept that there are always going to be gaps in your understanding historic history and biography or dynamic processes um working on biographies in the olden days um uh the evidence is pretty limited right so um we also deal with the fact and this is true in Monell’s work as well that there are things that you would like to know that you never can um because people didn’t document themselves or weren’t allowed to document themselves in the case of the enslaved Community or perhaps destroyed things that were private to them um biographers tend to love things that people in living their lives hate for example we love it when families are separated because they have to communicate with each other um whereas uh living a long and happy marriage in one household as my husband and I have been privileged to do um we haven’t left a lot behind about um our daily lives communicating with each other but John Singleton Copley and his wife separated by the Atlantic in a period of revolution um they left letters and that’s a a great gift their pain is a great gift to the biographer and speaking of pain it it it’s it’s also the case that sometimes as people are sifting through their life’s letters that they decide to burn them right and then then historians are left with less

to to to work work with it’s I I think we’re always even in 20th century work where there is a an unscalable mountain of just volume of documentation but there are always gaps that we can’t see right um I think of those uh pots in art museums where people are putting together shs and uh and in the Contemporary practice of restoration you show the Gap you don’t make it look like aimile of the thing you show the blank terracotta where there would have been figuration I think there’s something similar in historical writing um and in interpreting in a site like this where we you know we have to be able to say we think this because of X Y and Z but we don’t know this um because people didn’t talk about those things or because so and so was known to uh to destroy their letters um uh it’s always tantalizing when you get a record that something was destroyed gaps that we can’t see might be a good segue into Thomas Jefferson we’re here at Montello who was Thomas Jefferson uh Thomas Jefferson was our greatest philosopher of human Liberty on uh the western side of the Atlantic um he was a polymath uh interested in um questions of Law and governance um in architecture and music in natural history and wine um he was our he was a person of profound Paradox right our our greatest philosopher of Liberty who was himself an enslaver of more than 600 people over the course of his lifetime and to give it that extral sort of spiral twist who knew that slavery was wrong um so who was painfully aware of his own Paradox and contradictions I think this makes him a very important figure both to appreciate and to think with um Jefferson is good to think with not only about his own accomplishments and limitations but about the ways in which we are all creatures of paradox Inc completely understanding our world or understanding it well but not able fully to act upon it um and striving in our different ways for Transcendence right right we all like to believe that we have done something that will endure um even though all evidence suggests the contrary um I think Jefferson could not have predicted in 1776 that that second paragraph of the Declaration beginning we hold these truths would be the piece of his life’s work that endures um and it both encapsulates a man and his paradoxes and massively transcends an authorship uh a time and place a purpose of that document so I think he’s also a good person to think with about human

contributions and the ways that the text escapes the author um with profound and ongoing consequences for our experiment in self-government that’s fascinating so Jefferson can be a mirror for us I’d like to explore that more but you mentioned the arc that Jefferson in 1776 might not be able to see what a profound lasting effect those words he penned and were joined by others in in endorsing what became the Declaration of Independence do you think by the end of his life he had an inkling that those things might be among the most uh important that he ever penned I think you know the his selection of accomplishments for his Tombstone is the you know in addition to elements of Correspondence where he reflects on the Declaration and its ongoing import um but he you know he curates a life of preposterous accomplishment down to to three things for his Tombstone writing the Declaration of Independence um of which he then calls himself the author um uh crafting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and founding the University of Virginia um his time as Secretary of State his work in the Continental Congress in the Virginia state house um uh as Ambassador as president of the United States none of that makes the cut um so I think he realizes that it has achieved profound and enduring import lives to the 50th anniversary of the Declaration um a moment of uh of great celebration in the United States um but in 1776 The Young redheaded 30-some is just taking a committee assignment that he doesn’t particularly want and acting he says and I think um says both rightly and uh and with a little bit of leisure domain acting just as a scribe for quote unquote the American mind um so it’s a you know I think about this when I’m called on to serve on some committee that I don’t want um is this going to be the Declaration of Independence probably not yeah what a what an incredibly productive committee and perhaps the Constitutional Convention where Jefferson was not was one of those places where actually committee work left a a a profound uh Legacy and I think of three months of committee work most of that would us consider that a sentence or or sort of uh not something that we’d look forward to Jefferson had throughout his lifetime a really interesting relationship with John Adams one of the things that we’re exploring this year with teachers and students and our fellow Americans is how we live together with disagreement Freedom makes possible disagreement and disagreement makes possible Freedom exactly could you talk just a little bit about the Rel relationship that Jefferson and Adams had uh together what characterized initially their their their friendship and then maybe we can talk a little bit about what led to that friendship breaking down so they come up together

in the uh Imperial struggle um uh Adams in Massachusetts Jefferson in Virginia um they know of each other from writings but none of them has ever met before the Continental congresses convene in Philadelphia there’s uh one wonderful letters especially from Adams about what it’s like to meet those Virginians um with their very strange mores um and I think their initial encounters and the correspondence around Congress reminds us that these are people from uh N9 and then 12 and then 13 separate republics actually getting to know um uh the opportunity for a common peoplehood through that encounter um they both believe that the um precious rights of English Liberty have been encroached upon uh by Parliament and then especially by the king and they are um Brothers allies in struggle um uh and uh Adams who is first tapped for that committee uh tasks Jefferson as primary author I think because he knows he’s a good Wordsmith um from uh cause the necessity of taking up arms and other previous documents but also because he knows how important it is to have somebody who speaks from that other Republic of Virginia um uh if the thing is going to um Carry unanimity in the Congress um they are first together in struggles over Coalition right there’s the um the editing process of that Committee of five and especially the three lead authors of uh Jefferson Franklin and uh and Adams in that Committee of five and then there’s it to the broader Congress and hammering out some of the things that uh that Jefferson held most dear right um uh his paragraph about uh the international slave trade and the responsibility of the king of England as he saw it for foisting that uh that pernicious institution on the colonies was something he believed in passionately um and it was just line after line after line excised um so compromis is painful which is one of the things that their uh friendship is forged in is this um uh painful institution of compromise that also allows for human flourishing right like no compromise no Union um uh which is the struggle in 1776 again uh as the articles are working their way through between 1777 and 1781 and then again with the Constitutional Convention again with the reconstruction amendments um so a relationship forged and compromised that then comes apart over um toxic partisanship right uh they are they are some of the original

partisans in the contested election of 1796 and then uh again in 1800 they have widely Divergent VI views about what will lead to the flourishing of the young United States whether it’s um sort of Mercantile and fincial and routed through England or whether it’s idealistic Rural devolutionary and uh and admiring of France uh Jefferson takes the side of France and small government um Adams uh a more Imperial and uh financialized view of the United States and it comes apart hotly um to the point where Adams doesn’t attend Jefferson’s inauguration um uh they both believe in the peaceful transfer of power a crucial American principal but Adams can’t quite bring himself to witness it in a period of profound family sadness as well as political sadness and they go their separate ways um and the relationship is knit up uh beginning uh a dozen or so years later with an exchange of letters um where they decide over time and over um a a Frank and polite uh respectful exchange of views that they have more in common as Believers in the American project than they do dividing them um I was reading some of those letters recently and was interested in the role that family plays um you know uh it’s often the case for me when I sit down to do cross ideological work um which I believe in and which is one of the things that I think brought me to monello and Which monello models um you know if looking for a place where you can see commonality and your hope for the world ask about somebody’s household and what they want for the next generation and it starts that way hey I was thinking about your kids um uh and they rebuild enough trust to talk profoundly about issues they don’t smooth away their disagreements but they do find that Civic friendship that allows this um wonderful epistolary correspondence Well published it’s easy to uh to find it out there in um in modern format to flourish to the end of their lives right they die on the same day which is an almost too good to be true ending you wouldn’t believe it in a movie um uh and they both die loving the country even though in some ways their Visions for it remain as dissimilar as they were in 1800 um and even though both is a bit both are a bit ruul about the way that things have panned out um they also die knowing that they can’t quite keep their hands around the thing that they have created more comfortable for Jefferson who really believes in ceaseless experimentation than for Adams um who uh

who was a formalist in a whole set of ways the point about family is so interesting I think Abigail Adams in their long correspondence with John Adams seem to have often times a little bit more Prudence sh we say she was more temperate more willing to say well really does your ego have to lead the way here and very few people could say that to to John Adams what role did she play if any in your reading they had 12200 letters among the richest of the the the bodies of of letters and a republic of of of letters what role did Abby play in the the reconciliation so initially she keeps them apart right I mean uh she is the protector of her husband and partner in a marriage that is more of a true partnership than many we see in uh in the premodern era and um uh while she has been uh you know a a fiercely loyal friend of Mr Jefferson in the 1770s and 1780s she’s quite protective of John early on um and uh and it’s a little bit of a break on their um on their reconciliation um so I think you see the the shaping hand of family on the Adam side um through the you know the the wonderful correspondence of that family held at mess Historical Society who else played a role because there were intermediaries that were operating right between the two of them in the in the reconciliation can you say a little bit about how that kind of uh dayon first happened all right we can at least think about being because they were never in the same room right after after the the the breach they they maintained this this uh increasingly vibrant uh correspondence but were there other parties that were that were helping to kind of bring bring that Dayton to to being um so I really can’t speak to that right like I not out of any secrecy I just don’t know it well enough so let’s um uh but if ask it as like how how is the medium of letters important I’d love to talk about that for a minute you’ve talked a little bit about this incredible repository of letters that we have across this entire era what what significance did it hold as a as a whole for for um for the the time and also for this this kind of reproach M between Jefferson and Adams so um people referred to uh Western Civilization at this time as a republic of letters um which meant the printed page but also the importance of candid epistolary exchange Jefferson wrote over 22,000 in his lifetime uh and was uh kept his outgoing as well as his in correspondence through the polygraph machine um and I think in the Repro between Adams and Jefferson the form plays a role um in that it is so mediated right you you sit and think

about what you’re going to write um when you look at uh an 18th century quill pen and uh and a piece of 18th century woven paper this is not a speedy technology um so you’re it’s reflective you’re um you’re thinking and editing yourself uh you might have a wastebook where you’re Crossing out what you don’t mean to say and then between Charlottesville and Boston would have been a week in each Direction on a good day right if the Post Road wasn’t washed out by mud and um so when you receive something that makes you feel hot you have a moment to step away from it and not fire something you know they’re not tweeting at each other I think that’s really important um I like to think that they could have made it up in the same room um but the distance initially I think really helped um uh you can see in the correspondence that they answer each other pretty rapidly uh you know that uh Adams doesn’t let a letter from Jefferson sit for weeks um uh but if there’s a message for us in our current partisanship I think the Republic of letters says take a beat take a breath um uh a strategy they often use in their exchanges that um uh we think about in our civic education work together ask a question um uh and the the letters encourage modulation that way sometimes an archaic technology is better for civic life that’s such a a a great point I think of many other parallels you know in the in the rise and and kind of tempestuousness leading up to the 1800 election which if people have not read about this you really should it it is an incredibly incendiary thing with allegations that were just as scarless as anything that’s that’s being sent forth back and forth now via VI via Twitter how do we draw from the standown from that in this Civic friendship that’s such an important term Civic friendship it’s a it’s a category right now that seems almost beyond our reach in our era now if you think of that pitch that you reach where everything is political and it’s very difficult to get beyond the partisanship there are certain steps that can be taken does the does the Friendship the restoration of the the Friendship of Adams and Jefferson tell us about some practical steps you just pointed to one of them think before you before you attack maybe don’t attack at all right let that let that moderation as a virtue lead the way rather than your haste to get out there and be what Amanda Ripley has called a conflict entrepreneur how do you how do we step back from the the precipice that we’re at right now and say we actually want to reverse ratchet because we’ve ratcheted very high now into this extremely uh hyper pooli polarized moment how how can we stand back and what do Jefferson and

Adams teach us on that front I mean I I think the um they start from a basis of trust and they return to a basis of trust and part of that is recognizing that there are crisis entrepreneurs standing between them right I mean one of the one of the things that I think about in my own civil discourse work is who doesn’t want this conversation to happen right the um you know part of the reason that we are so polarized is there are tons of incentives to polarization right not just the dopamine hits that any of us who are on social I’m not um get from uh that you know that Rush of negative affect but um you know there are there are funding streams that um that attach to um uh ingroup passion rather than um coalitional solidarity um so think about who benefits when uh when we are polarized and um Jefferson and Adams initially fall out because of the partisan press uh in in large measure uh there’s a wonderful book which you probably know called The Tyranny of printers um using the Contemporary uh 18 Century phrase by Jeff Pasley at University of Missouri um there’s a widespread acceptance that the newspapers are partisan organs um and uh Adams seeks to control them and Jefferson initially doesn’t but is bit pretty hard um uh by the partisan press so one of the things that they recognize is how badly they have been served um by being whipsawed by uh the 18th century news cycle which is as you said much slower but um but just as passionate I think the um the starting one to one and in small groups right like you you know it’s really hard to build trust on a platform um one of the things that I love about the ways that Civil Society organizations like braver Angels or stand together or living room conversations are proceeding is trying to find people um in small groups where they are to take a small risk uh with somebody else and then they start small right um uh how’s your son doing I was so sorry to hear or I was so delighted by um uh by his advance in um in this Quest rather then um let’s dig right back into the um to the pain Point um I guess the last thing I would say is um and you and I have worked on this together through educating for American democracy to think about and teach the virtues of Coalition right that um uh the virtues of abridging some of what you want to get more of what you need um and figuring out what the things are that you care about that the largest number of people who disagrees with you cares

about and how you can have that conversation with them in a language that Embraces you all so I think Jefferson and Adams got to a point where they were looking for something other than the maximum infliction of pain right the opportunity to inflict pain was always there um is more available to you with someone that you have trusted and loved than it is with the stranger through the screen um and stepping back and thinking that there is a higher possibility than winning the point um I I feel like that’s fallen out of favor in our in the way we conduct our classrooms the way we conduct our political campaigns um the way that we conduct our social lives and we would be better um following Jefferson and Adams on that path cruelty sometimes seems to be the point today right owning your your whoever your enemies are right this has become part of our lexicon even media bubbles are no modern Innovation right the you just mentioned the the kind of tyranny that could uh beset those who used uh news papers as As Weapons how do we as individuals whether we’re omnivores and we’re trying to consume a lot of news or we’re right now really fearful or just tired of it how do we begin to challenge ourselves to read other things you know one of the things that I loved about our work together in the project that you mentioned educating for American democracy is that in our first halting steps we had to do a lot of getting to know one another and getting to know even the terminology what are we going to call this what is our country called is it a constitutional republic it is it is it a constitutional democracy the term that we landed on all of that kind of navigation helped to build some of those bridges but it was clear that many of the people who were participating what became quite a large effort of hundreds of individuals were open and had to be open throughout to the idea that their world their media bubbles had to be expanded and that they’d made a practice of that I fear that one thing that we’re we’re facing now is that people are embracing ing the idea that hey I’m in my bubble and I really like being in my bubble how do we begin to pull people dangerous out there it’s dangerous out there yeah you don’t you couldn’t possibly trust or or start reading the Rival you know whatever the Rival might be you know media and it seems like we’re going to have to uh take some of those first halting steps in order to be able to rebuild those bonds of trust so I I think there are media organs that are taking that as their mission now right like I think the Atlantic has um unnoticeably plural chorus of serious voices right the um so I guess I’m I’m thinking about how we look for the places I I you know at Montello and in my own historical and Civil Society work I am a center out person um and how we

find how we find and broaden centers rather than oh you’re listening to MSNBC you should listen to One America um and I think that maybe fuels a cycle of of Rage where you’re just oscillating um uh back and forth the who is trying to do the good work of hearing each other um uh and then asking people you’re in conversation with what are you reading that you’re care that you care about that I’m not reading um I’m amazed at the number of people I talk to about you know who do you who do you read in the New York Times uh uh Ed page who will say like oh I I will I will never read dad I only read Krugman um and it’s like well what if you didn’t read daat or Krugman but you read David French all the time um or or Margaret re renle his uh his statemate um and and thought about those places where people are really reaching to be heard by people who are not in the tent um I I also think centrism has a bad name uh I know this from my children right who um who have told me they they hate centrists more than the radical extremes um which is just broken right and which is precisely what um I’m a huge fan of the research Enterprise more in common right and their hidden tribes report tells us that’s exactly what’s going on is that the leftmost 8% and the rightmost 12% is driving 75% of the conversation um so um uh to you know to loudly embrace the the crafting of centers and the moving out from centers in coalitional politics as as a way forward in a self-governing country and if we can find Historical exemplars that show us they took this path and it worked and they took that path and it failed um uh then I think we have successful ways of bringing a vital past into a fractured present it’s a beautiful Vision how do you foresee Montello playing a role in that kind of work because every day you welcome visitors here and every year there are tens of thousands that come to Montello they are from every walk of American Life they’re thrown into tour groups sometimes they might exchange ideas over the course of these wonderful tours if people have not been to Montello I hope everyone hearing this will will come to this amazing place the tour guides are electric and the place is electric you have an opportunity perhaps to inject some of this Civic Dimension that you’ve you you you said at the outset of our conversation has so motivated you what do you want Montello to do as part of this kind of reentering if you will of the United States of America so I think that is our

huge opportunity right we we serve over 300,000 people a year on site and about 10 times as many online and as you suggest they come from every state in the in the nation um many zip codes within that state within those States um they’re not sorted in the ways that we tend to be in our workplaces right sorted by educational level or by political tribe um uh by ZIP code which is the most profound sorting in American Life um and uh we deliver consistently across that broad audience hard history told with integrity and backed up by evidence so I think um as teachers we’re modeling evidence literacy we’re modeling bravery right you should be able to talk about hard things and know that not everybody in the room is going to agree with you and think about that as a virtue um to me the secret sauce will be if we can encourage people more often to talk to each other um we are piloting a tour for 2025 2026 semiquincentennial season on the politics and partisanship of the early National period uh biographically themed around Jefferson and Adams um we know from visitors that they want to learn more about the politics of the early United States um I also think it’s comforting to know that it has been this bad before and and the work of ordinary humans can make it better right so um so it’s a lesson that we are not the first hyperparasite people to sit down break bread together and have a facilitator who is trained in Cross ideological conversation ask people to contemplate questions like what do you love about the United States and what embarrasses you about the United States what do you want to change um uh as in our conversation about Jefferson and Adams Building on family familiarity uh build out from food right and the um there is a feast of Reason card deck it’s recently been uh digitized for us uh with Civic Ed partners that starts with sort of appetizer questions right like you know what what are your favorite what are your favorite foods what do you dislike um and and builds to can we talk you know to strangers can we talk to strangers about the things we care about in this country um I would boil all that down to saying I think that Montello is a place that can face boldly the um deep and and meaningful divisions of our past right like the division over slavery is not an unfortunate sideline it is a meaningful

decision about the morality of the United States um uh so that face those things head on but can also think about the we in we the people you know if we’re going to recover the center we have to believe that it means something to be a people as well as 50 people 50 states as well as infinite um tribes and households within those States um so I hope we can set a literal table that will help us um uh reinforce the importance of the wi and help people Discover it you know um I guess my fantasy would be that people who go through such an experience might exchange phone numbers um right like let’s keep this up as a text chain that would be the kind of small victory that um if people took that breadcrumb back to their communities um it’s an ongoing connection to us good for business um but it’s also um maybe it’s a a seed and not a a breadcrumb it’s something you can plant um and think about how to harvest and share in a community Jane the reason I think that your vision which is a bold and beautiful Vision can become reality is that that same study that you cited more in common points to the fact that the people that are kind of in the middle not on the extremes are deemed the exhausted majority but they’re exhausted by what we have now not by each other nor by those hard conversations in fact I think people want them uh we know that from our teachers we know that from our students all across the country and the teachers and students that that Montello serves I would venture to uh uh to Guess that they they they similarly want to have those conversations and are eminently capable of them I hope the feasts of Reason uh the Jeffersonian feasts can lead to a time you know we’ve as a nation kind of given up on Thanksgiving in a way the idea that people can come together as families even and say well let’s talk about something other than I mean sports are great um but you know that that idea that well you want to talk about anything other than religion and politics and maybe religion and politics don’t have to be at the center but being able to say let’s talk about those things which might divide us because we’re bigger than those divisions I think is is something that can be much more than just a pipe dream but a but but a reality I think there’s evidence uh that that that points in that direction I’m so glad that you’re you’re pursuing that Vision can you tell us just a little bit about this this exhibit uh that you’re that you’re you’re planning and will it be touching mainly on the election of 1800 and kind of the what led up to it or or we’d love a little preview if you so um you know we’re gonna we’re going to dig into how parties were formed right um uh the fear of faction that the founders events in the discussion around the Constitution um and then the

the nation right um uh it’s not just the stroke of a pen we declaration is obviously preeminently important here but the Declaration lays down an ideal and destroys an old order it does not create a new one right the working out of that new one um takes the rest of uh Jefferson and the founding generation’s lives and is ongoing right we’re still what we’re describing is still that work of um of working out the founding um like all tours of Montello it needs to work through the um the geography and the collections in the house so asking questions like why did Jefferson keep busts of Adams and Hamilton his preeminent political Rivals Always In Plain Sight um why did he uh collect the death mask of Oliver Cromwell um uh among the treasures in his library with this um harbinger of how Republican republics can turn into tyranny so um like biography a house tour thinks very concretely look at that and um and think about this large dynamic um I think one of the things we can teach on this tour is what healthy parties look like right what are parties for I think you could ask that question on any Street in the United States and not get a convincing answer unless you were talking to a political scientist right parties are supposed to organize our different in ways that um that don’t immediately go to the most profound cleavage and then crack the whole glass um so what are parties for how did they undermine their own work um how are they functioning by the end of Jefferson’s life what did it mean to be a democratic Republican as he called himself um what it mean what did it mean to be a federalist and then a wig um so I think working through the collections in the house and the sight lines that Jeff Jefferson crafted and the stage setting of his own epistolary life which is at the center of the tour where he wrote his uh his letters and copied his own letters um uh can tell that abstract story in a way that um has a material and biographical Center we talk a lot about the power of place here um and I think um if one of our questions in uh Civic engagement Civic disagreement is how do hard stories land best I think in a beautiful place where you can think through a small corner of a big thing um and you know looking at the fact that Jefferson’s bust of Adams is staring at him um through through his whole life uh that he’s collecting a lineage in uh in his parlor that includes the great thinkers of uh the English 17th and 18th century the Explorer of the continent

and then creating a lineage of the first presidents of the United States um what are the stories about the Republic and its fractures and Futures that he’s trying to tell um I hope this will have you know would be full of pregnant analogy right um uh we’re we’re not going to talk in this tour about the us today thank you David it was a total pleasure happy Constitution Day to you too there’s a lot of takeaways that from that conversation I think are really important but what I want to zero in on gets to the heart of our theme for the day Jane said that freedom makes possible disagreement and that disagreement makes possible freedom I think what she meant by that was the idea that when we’re all working together we all have different ideas about how we can get something done we may have different political ideas but it may be as simple as different ideas on what we want to have for dinner how do we come to an agreement where we can all move forward what does it mean to do that within a constitutional framework that was part of the conversation earlier today that you’ve all live in talked with Tony Williams about what does it mean to come together and I think it starts with trusting each other and seeing that value in each other and again that’s that idea of Civic friendship how do we see the best in each other to try to find disagreement to try to overcome disagreement and to move forward in a way that’s beneficial to all of our society I also really like Jane’s comments about writing letters because it was both about writing letters but also about the process of what it means to engage with our fellow citizens it’s important to take a step back to think about what you want to say and then to go through the process of saying it but in a reasonable way not just reacting but finding a way in the form of letters at least of writing it down carefully considering it then sending along and of course thinking back to those days it took a long time for a letter to go out and come back and that whole time you’re waiting for what the response is going to be and you’re trying to anticipate it when you’re writing a letter that I thought was really important because in today’s age we get information rapidly and it’s important to always take a step back and to think about it I think that really helps with us in overcoming some of these disagreements it’s not about just what that person might be saying but it’s about the idea that they’re presenting how can we get Beyond sort of a personal exchange where we get sort of excited but get to a place where we can actually have a dialogue to discuss and to overcome some of those disagreements Constitution Day is really about looking at the foundations of what makes our constitutional system work and I’m really excited to announce that we now have a new opportunity to do that for the Elementary grades B Jr is a collection of Elementary lessons and we’re going to take a deeper look at that right now welcome to B Jor our K5 programming where history and literacy come alive to inspire Young Learners from crafting paragraphs to drawing insightful conclusions our curriculum empowers students to explore themes and perspectives while mastering essential literacy skills like identifying text

structures and understanding point of view Bri Junior resources are a journey through US History to build literacy skills and practice Civic virtues they’ll investigate primary sources engage in debate art and writing and build the skills of citizenship enhancing our lessons are vibrant animated videos that immerse students in historical narratives and make learning both engag Ing and impactful whether decoding the past or creating their own stories inspired by American Heroes these activities and lessons deepen comprehension spark curiosity and help teachers create a vibrant classroom explore our resources today and discover the power of learning with us hello young historians today we will embark on a journey to uncover the secrets of the US Constitution let’s see how the pieces of the Constitution fit together to shape the government we have today in a land not too far away 13 states made up America but the people there faced a big puzzle how to create a government that would be just protect them and be controlled by the people remember the United States created its first government in the Articles of Confederation in 1777 it Loosely unified the states but this new national government lacked some key Powers the federal government was too weak problems emerged because of this weak national government many began to think this could threaten the survival of the new nation men like James Madison George Washington and others put their heads together to solve the puzzle of how to keep the states independent but unite the states more under a stronger central government [Music] imagine a room in Philadelphia Pennsylvania filled with Brilliant Minds like James Madison Benjamin Franklin and George Washington they were the problem solvers brainstorming ideas to craft a brand new kind of government these men had a big job to do they were the architects of our nation’s future putting their heads together to build something incredible through long and hot summer

days and nights these men talked disagreed debated and argued with each other slowly finding common ground and compromises these ideas were like puzzle pieces fitting together to create something great one of their important discussions involved the legislative branch or congress this branch of government would make the laws in 1787 one important question was how many representatives each state got to have states with less people tended to support an even distribution of Representatives each state getting the same number many larger States preferred allocating Representatives based on population so states with more people would have more Representatives Southern States also wanted their enslaved populations counted toward representation a compromise was achieved this is often called the Great Compromise both sides got some of what they wanted the plan for equal representation for States would be enshrined in the Constitution through the Senate with two senators per state the plan for Representatives based on population would come to life in the House of Representatives this compromise included counting every five enslaved individuals as three people for counts of population these two branches would make up the legislative branch in 1787 after much debate and collaboration like the Great Compromise they signed the Constitution let’s flip through the Constitution’s pages to see how it assigns and limits Government powers the Constitution created three branches of government just like three puzzle pieces the legislative branch makes laws through the Senate and the House of Representatives the executive branch enforces them and the judicial branch examines the law imagine a scale that keeps things balanced each branch watches over the others so they don’t become too powerful this is called checks and balances this was the remarkable Tale of the US Constitution and its role in shaping our government like a puzzle its

pieces were shaped to fit together to Define our government and unite our country our story for today ends here but the story of history is still being written by us keep exploring and see how you and your learning community fit into this puzzle [Music] I love seeing resources for the younger Learners to work directly with the principles of our constitution it’s so powerful and so important especially as we know that young people love thinking about ideas of fairness and responsibility and friendship and really applying those directly to our system the government and the Constitution I’m so grateful that we now have these resources to chair with teachers around the country and Elementary classrooms so thanks to your team for putting all this together yeah absolutely the team did an incredible job putting these together and I hope that many teachers find an opportunity to take a look at them check them out they’re on our website now but it really is an opportunity to begin engaging in a lot of these important Civic lessons at a younger age at the elementary level and you know Civic leadership is something that we should all take to heart and our next guest has a lot of experience being a Civic leader and a leader within the government and that of course is Dr cona rice who our president Dr David Bob had a chance to sit down with and they had a great conversation about what it means to be a leader and how it is that our constitutional system brings us together and so I hope that you’ll enjoy their conversation Dr Kisa rice thank you so much for joining the Bill of Rights Institute it’s a pleasure to be with you and thank you for the great work that you do you’ve called America an extraordinary experiment how is our experiment going well let’s start with the fact that uh at the end of the 19th century uh not too many people of the 18th century not too many people were thinking that self-governance uh was possible they certainly didn’t think that it could be carried out by asking their citizens to uh to to have their passions and their interest to go through these abstractions called institutions uh a constitution uh these were really pretty radical ideas the remarkable thing is that they basically have served us well for the entire history of our country uh ours was a country that was founded as a slave owning country and yet now the descendants of slaves found their rights a first time with the Emancipation and a second time with the civil rights movement of the 60s through this constitution so I would say that while the uh American experiment is still and

perhaps will always be in its experimental stage uh there is a lot to be proud of and a lot to be Greatful for our American experiment is about self-government what does self-government mean for our everyday lives I like to think that uh the founders gave us great institutions through the Constitution they gave us structures like uh the idea that there should be separation of powers uh but then they gave us a set of Rights those rights though were accompanied with an expectation of certain responsibilities and so that brought us the citizen right into the midst of what self-government meant it meant that uh we were not just to exercise our rights without regard for what that would mean for the larger project and so um I think it’s a remarkable thing uh that uh we actually think of the Constitution as our personal protector I have a friend who is German who said to me the problem with you Americans is you have rights and you think you have to exercise them I said yeah well that would be us but it’s really the Constitution when you think about the fact that if if I think you’ve violated my rights I will take you all the way to the Supreme Court Brown versus the Board of Education how many countries can say that uh their citizens believe it’s their personal protector but with that comes a responsibility to respect those institutions to care and nurture about them to teach about them to Future Generations because that’s the only way that this experiment works I love that idea of personal uh protection and that that ownership that each individual can have uh Thomas Jefferson used the phrase everyday citizenship and his fellow Virginia James Madison talked about a parchment barrier you know you’ve uh been Secretary of State uh National Security adviser you’ve seen the Constitutions of so many countries you’re an expert on Russia so many have written down these protections that are supposed to be personal but have no teeth in them they’re just parchment barriers when you look at um our country today we know and looking at uh the kind of our country in comparison to others that freedom is fragile when when we have the freedom to disagree we also have the tendency As Americans to pull apart uh how can we Americans learn to disagree better we have to learn to disagree better because uh again Madison and the others would have thought of Politics as constant contestation you’re always uh in constantly in a contest of ideas but you can’t have a contest of ideas if I refuse to listen to you if I refuse to take your views into consideration if I refuse to refute your views in a civil way so that we can share data we can

share evidence we can have a con a a a a discussion a conversation that is not going to send us to our Corners uh simply yelling at one another and I think uh unfortunately these days we have a little too much of that uh some of it yes is the effect of uh social media and the internet there’s a kind of anonymity to it uh there is a sense that you can go to your own tribe I can go to my aggregators my websites my bloggers my cable news channels maybe I never actually encounter anybody who thinks differently and now when I do encounter them I think they’re either stupid or venal and we have to make sure that we’re not staying in our own tribes our own Echo Chambers uh where we never uh have a chance to to disagree agreeably you lead the Hoover institution and under your leadership you’ve recently established the center for revitalizing American institutions what do you hope will come from this work the reason that we wanted to have a center uh for revitalizing American institutions so we want it first to remind uh everyone uh we sit in a university and so reminding students reminding faculty who are responsible for passing on uh the stories and the uh the views about the Constitution that these are living institutions uh they’re not just something that they wrote on a piece of paper um in in 1789 and then 1790 it was all kind of agreed to and then it went onto a shelf someplace you have a responsibility when these institutions um show uh that perhaps there’s trouble uh we know for instance that only that that 35% of Americans don’t trust their elections that’s a really bad number for uh for a constitutional democracy uh we know that the uh views of Congress or of politicians or of the media or increasingly of the military are sinking in the do you trust them category and so so it is our responsibility as Citizens as Scholars uh as students to take responsibility for trying to revitalize them to understand first of all what’s going on but also responsibility to actually try to do something about it and so we think by studying these uh these concerns uh more deeply trying to shed more light than heat uh on them that perhaps we can get back to a day when Americans really do trust these institutions because it’s it’s it’s David it’s all that holds us together uh we’re not held together by uh nationality or religion or uh

ethnicity or Creed we’ve come from every corner of the earth we uh there are people who are Muslim and and Christian and Jewish and nothing at all and we’re all Americans but it’s this Creed that holds us together and so we have to protect it and defend it and extend it and Revitalize it from time to time I so appreciate that emphasis on responsibilities historically Civil Society has helped give rise to some of the most uh really enduring American institutions what needs to be done to revitalize Civil Society let me start first with what’s really great about Civil Society in America and in that I would include uh non-governmental uh institutions because one of the F things that the founders did was they left a lot of space that wasn’t inhabited by the government that was supposed to be the people or the Civil Society and you know when dville came to the United States in 1835 to understand these Americans as he called them he was a bit puzzled by what he called these voluntary associations that got together just to do good today we think we would think of them as the Red Cross or boy Boys and Girls Clubs or rotary clubs that’s a vibrancy of democracy and when I was a secretary and I would go around the world I would say really make sure that that your Civic Culture Your Civil Society is really thriving and one of the first things that authoritarians and dictators try to shut down is civil society because they believe they can control the levers of government but they might not be able to control citizens who have organized themselves just to do good and so um I think our civil society is our great strength I often say to my students uh if you want to be a part of democracy it doesn’t mean that you have to go and work in Washington DC it can also mean that you’re going to tutor at a Boys and Girls Club it can also mean that you’re going to start the um a rotary club once you move to a new city it can also mean that you might work at the state or local level because the founding fathers didn’t put everything in Washington DC I always jokingly say you know they kind of put the federal government in a swamp between Virginia and Maryland and they went back to the state houses where they thought all of the action would be and so we have a vibrant tapestry of Institutions a really robust infrastructure of Institutions and to practice democracy you have to use them all giving young people a vibrant technical view of what that tapestry means is part of the mission of the Bill of Rights Institute we’ve been pleased to work with you and the team at the Hoover institution to create some videos and lesson plans that help tell that story of the tapestry and also what it

means to not just think about civil society as an abstraction but to like you said jump in and recognize that as a young person you can make a difference and you can do so not just by going to Washington DC in fact the real engine of our progress has been as you just said in these uh institutions that grow these these um movements that really grow from from Civil Society you’ve pointed to the importance in our conversation here of responsible leadership to have the revitalization that we all seek and that you’re uh endeavoring to to study and and and Lead uh with this new new center what kind of leadership really is going to to make a difference here leadership that is going to make a difference is first and foremost to recognize that leadership is not a destination nor is it a job description it’s something that is earned the trust is earned the belief is earned again I tell my students start small uh don’t walk into my office tell me I want to be a leader go and organize your dorm for something that’s an act of leadership it’s also leaders and this is really true of democracies leaders have to recognize leadership characteristics in others because pulling together for the common good is what sustains democracy when you think about authoritarians what do they do well it’s all about them they draw all of the attention and all of the power to themselves the problem is if you’re going to be omnipotent you’d better be omniscient too and very few human beings are all knowing so democracies are strong because they have leaders throughout Society because they have people who’ve earned the trust and I I sometimes wish that we had a little bit more humility um in some of our uh leaders uh maybe you know as I get older the past always looks better there’s something about that but um I would just say if you want to be a leader start with humility that leadership is not something you were born to it’s something that you that you earn that’s such great advice for young people and that’s really where we’re uh wanted to conclude our conversation today you gave us just some some practical advice that we can share and emulate for for young people they come to you looking for questions about how do I become a leader you’re saying to them start small Smart Start start in your local community if there’s one other thing that you wanted to leave uh those students particularly who are joining us today with uh please uh please offer some some councel and and and advice is they’re looking to be on that path where they can be part of this movement to revitalize American institutions I am so grateful that you give us this opportunity to uh to talk with students and to to advise them

we’ve been through a lot and we’ve made our own share of mistakes as leaders and you will do that but don’t be afraid uh to go out and to put yourself out there uh to help your fellow citizens in one way or another to achieve goals you also have a responsibility to know something about what you’re doing um I often say to my students before we try to solve that problem why don’t we try to know something about that problem why don’t we recognize that there are competing views about that problem why don’t we recognize that just because I think it it may not be so and so it goes back to something that you mentioned about disagreement and doing it agreeably and listening to people who have different opinions one of the strengths of democracy is that we have both that right and that responsibility to debate to bring new evidence to bring new thoughts we don’t have to just take the dictate of the government as the word which is what happens in authoritarian regimes and I think it’s a protection for us because while sometimes democracy is a little frustrating we may think why can’t they get something done well those authoritarians can get something done very quickly but very often it’s a big mistake because it’s the thinking of one person not the thinking of the society as a whole and so I would say um take the time as a student to really delve into problems to really understand them to travel if you can to other places because nothing will uh will really give you confidence about uh what the American experiment is and where it’s going than to go to other places where they don’t have the liberty and the freedom that we enjoy and then come back determined uh to make sure that this experiment continues for the generations Beyond you Dr Rice thank you for your leadership thank you for your time today and thank you for for everything that you’re doing to help uh bring this uh not only Constitution Day but the revitalization of American institutions to fruition thank you we are so appreciative that Dr Rice took time to sit down with Dr Bob and you know their conversation just so inspiring to me especially in the way that they were talking about how our institutions really bring us together and unify us in a diverse country especially because again we all have disagreements that we’re working to I wouldn’t even say overcome although I said at the beginning of the show it’s less that we’re overcoming them it’s more that we’re working through our disagreements to find productivity and that takes leadership which Dr Rice talked a lot about um takes good Civic leaders but it also takes non-governmental institutions the things that hold us together in civil society and something that someone that I know that you have thought a lot about Rachel uh Alexis dville who wrote Democracy in America um in the 19th century thought a

lot about what is it that is in our communities that brings us together and what are the institutions that we have As Americans that help us fortify that disagreement across difference right that it’s never going to be the case that Americans agree on basically anything we know we have the starting with the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists up until today there are vast differences in what we think the role of government is what we think the role of the individual is but there are institutions that we have that let us coordinate and cooperate and flourish across those differences and it was so interesting to hear Dr Rice’s take on those but really throughout this whole program how we really are built for this yeah absolutely and and and important that we are because again that our ability to disagree about things but still come to a consensus and move forward as a country is really important and it’s something that civic education has a lot to say about and that’s why we are it’s that time in the program we are so excited to introduce the 2025 National Civics teacher of the year here it is the Bill of Rights Institute National Civics teacher of the year for 2024 25 school year is shie Condit from Woodland High School in Woodland Washington the Bill of Rights Institute was on hand at Woodland High on September 10th to surprise shie with the award at a Special Assembly shie has been in the classroom for more than 20 years she is a national board certified teacher and a former James Madison fellow and is beloved by her students and colleagues in her essay for the competition shie wrote I believe that it is my responsibility and the responsibility of all Civics Educators to create momentum so that young adults transition from classroom students to engaged members in a free and just Society congratulations to shie condet the Bill of Rights Institute National Civics teacher of the year thank you so much for joining us for another Constitution Day where we’ve looked at the theme of debate dialogue and the Constitution and how that system the Constitution helps us come together even through our different and the message really is perennial it’s something we talk about pretty much every year on Constitution Day life but it feels especially po this year there’s so many conversations about how divided we are and how different Americans have become uh but I think over the course of today’s program we’ve really tried to focus on how we’ve come together you know there’s so many different opinions and works and things that Americans are trying to do with their lives and when you think about it we’re doing we’re doing okay yeah you know you’ve all live in used the word hope and I really like thinking about it that way our institutions give us an opportunity to recognize the value in each other to work to find some common ground to build coalitions that can all work towards our common good our common benefit uh and you know I hope that that’s a message that you take away from today’s program

across the different the different segments we had discussions about the history of difference with Dr kensy we had leadership and our responsibility when we when we encountered the difference with Dr Rice and you have the Bill of Rights Institute our resources too that really help you think through how do we do this how do we continue to perpetuate institutions across seemingly more and more difference absolutely and what does it take to stand up for our rights when needed like Eric Meyer did in standing up for freedom of speech and so I hope today that you’ll take that message back to your own constituents your own communities your own classrooms as you continue to investigate and learn more about the Constitution and your role within Civil Society so thank you so much for joining us for Constitution Day live 2024 our fifth year of Constitution Day live Kirk and I are so grateful that you’ve taken the time and we look forward to seeing you next year thank you so much