The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) is pleased to announce the tentative schedule for the Twelfth Annual Carl B. Menges Colloquium “Last Best, Hope:” Citizenship, Statesmanship & American History,” November 8-10, 2019 at the Radisson Hotel, 175 Jefferson Rd., Rochester, NY 14623 and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).  The conference is co-sponsored by RIT’s Center for Statesmanship, Law, and Liberty and the Bill of Rights Institute. The events of Friday evening, November 8, and the keynote on Saturday, November 9, will be open to students, high-school teachers in Greater Rochester, and the public. For additional information or to confirm attendance, please contact Robert Paquette at (315) 292-2267 or bob@theahi.org.

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On Friday evening at 7 p.m. at the Radisson Hotel, Dr. Mary Grabar will discuss her recently published book, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America (Regnery, 2019), an Amazon best-seller.  A panel discussion with Dr. Grabar and three other scholars will follow.

AHI Resident Fellow Mary Grabar

Wilfred McClay, the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, will deliver the keynote address on Saturday November 9 at 7 p.m. on the RIT Campus, Room 1250, Gosnell Hall. Dr. McClay is the author of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Encounter, 2019), also an Amazon best-seller.  Both events will include a book signing. Continuing Education Certificates are available for high school teachers who meet requirements. AHI will provide inscribed copies of each book to high school teachers; copies will be sold to others at discounted prices.

This year’s seminar focuses on the study of American history, its use and abuse, and the methods and standards appropriate to the teaching of the discipline. Dr. Grabar’s Debunking Howard Zinn provides a devastating critique of the “scholarship” in a textbook that has sold more than 2.6 million copies and is widely used as required reading in introductory American history courses in high schools and colleges. Dr. McClay’s Land of Hope stands as not only a far superior alternative to Zinn’s text—a lucid narrative of American history from Christopher Columbus to Donald Trump—but as a learned primer in the meaning of citizenship itself.

Wilfred McClay, the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma

Both McClay and Grabar reclaim the lost role of virtuous citizens in statesmen and stateswomen in perpetuating the American experiment as, in Lincoln’s words, the “last best, hope of earth.” The seminar will combine the study of primary sources with tours to historical sites associated with Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, significant contributors to the great American story in extending the full rights of citizenship to women and persons of African descent.