An upcoming AEI event, Recovering republican virtue in a fractured age, puts these questions front and center.

In the first essay of the “Federalist Papers,” Alexander Hamilton noted that it fell to the American people to decide “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” To secure the former would depend on cultivating a kind of public-spiritedness now commonly referred to as “republican virtue.” But what exactly is republican virtue? How should it intersect with our political and social institutions? And how can we demand it from our leaders?

Please join AEI and Claremont McKenna College’s Salvatori Center for a panel discussion on recovering this essential civic sentiment and how it may counter the “passions and prejudices” that Hamilton warned could threaten constitutional self-government.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021 | 2:00 PM to 3:15 PM ET

You can register here: https://www.aei.org/events/recovering-republican-virtue-in-a-fractured-age/

Agenda

2:00 PM
Welcome and introduction:
Adam J. White, Resident Scholar, AEI

2:05 PM
Panel discussion

Panelists:
Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Colleen Sheehan, Professor of Politics, Arizona State University
Steven Smith, Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science, Yale University
George Thomas, Burnet C. Wohlford Professor of American Political Institutions, Claremont McKenna College

Moderator:
Adam J. White, Resident Scholar, AEI

3:00 PM
Q&A

3:15 PM
Adjournment