MACON – Mercer University’s Thomas and Ramona McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles will observe Constitution Day with a virtual lecture by Dr. Nicholas Buccola, Elizabeth and Morris Glicksman Chair in Political Science at Linfield University in McMinnville, Oregon.
The lecture, titled “Frederick Douglass and the U.S. Constitution,” is available now for on-demand viewing on the Center’s website.
Dr. Buccola will join students, faculty and guests Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. for a live question-and-answer session on the Zoom video conferencing platform.
“We have to be flexible and resourceful this year with our speaker series, but we’re really excited about the ways in which our students will be able to interact with Professor Buccola,” said Dr. Will Jordan, associate professor of political science and co-director of the McDonald Center.
Dr. Buccola, who also serves as founding director of the Frederick Douglass Forum on Law, Rights and Justice at Linfield, joined the University’s faculty in 2007. His teaching and research interests include political theory and public law.
He is the author of The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America (Princeton University, 2019) and The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (New York University Press, 2012). He is the editor of The Essential Douglass: Writings and Speeches (Hackett, 2016) and Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy (University Press of Kansas, 2016).
Dr. Buccola’s essays have appeared in scholarly journals including The Review of Politics and American Political Thought, as well as popular outlets such as The New York Times, Salon, The Baltimore Sun and Dissent.
This year’s Constitution Day lecture is sponsored by a generous grant from the Jack Miller Center.
About the Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles
The Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles exists to supplement Mercer University’s excellent liberal arts program with a redoubled commitment to the foundational texts and ideas that have shaped Western Civilization and the American political order. This focus on the core texts of the Western tradition helps to revitalize a cross-centuries dialogue about citizenship, human rights, and political, economic and religious freedom, thereby deepening the moral imagination and fostering civic and cultural literacy.
The McDonald Center’s programming includes the annual A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, faculty-student reading groups, a general education course on America’s Founding Principles, summer Great Books programs for high school teachers and students, and undergraduate research fellowships. All programming is designed to enhance Mercer’s longstanding role as a distinctive home of liberal learning, a place where serious students come to live the life of the mind and emerge more thoughtful and engaged citizens.
