What are the fundamental ideas behind the American national project? What are its persistent aspirations and struggles? What is this country about? What was it created to achieve? These questions can be asked about America in a way that cannot be asked of any other country because America was constituted by a deliberate act of self-creation.

To bring itself into existence, America invoked not kinship, tradition, or geography but a novel idea of “a people” as constituted by political consent. The document by which the as-yet-unnamed community declared itself “a people” by political consent is the most consequential political document of the modern era: the Declaration of Independence. In this discussion, we will highlight and discuss its most salient ideas.

This dinner seminar will be led by Roosevelt Montás (Columbia). It is open to all undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates.