2024 Teacher Seminar Livestream Registration Calendar

The eighteenth century followed the Enlightenment’s move toward reason in politics by developing new concepts of statesmanship. There was a very delicate transition to be managed between the traditional statesmanship of the Renaissance and the absolute monarchies of the seventeenth century on the one hand, and the new democratic republics of the American and French Revolutions. George Washington is a particular example of a republican statesmanship (and all the more important for how so many other attempts at crafting a revolutionary or republican statesmanship failed) and of the statesmanship of founding.

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Whenever we teach history, we want to teach more than just “what happened.” We want to teach skills like assessing change and continuity, causation, and thinking about effects. This lecture will address these historical skills in the context of the Second World War.

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Many historians think of the 1914–1945 period as one historical time period. This lecture will explore how Europe and the world got rebuilt after the great cataclysm of the First World War. Decisions made in 1919 did not make the Second World War inevitable, but they set the conditions for what followed.

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We normally think of the First World War as a European event, but it had dramatic effects in Asia as well. The balance of power changed in Japan’s favor and domestic chaos in China expanded. The European empires grew weaker, making Japan even more powerful.

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Contrary to what we sometimes teach, the United States was not ignoring Europe in the 1930s. “Isolation” meant not ignoring the outside world but avoiding any treaties or obligations like the League of Nations that might limit American sovereignty.

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Once WWII began, the United States and its partners had to begin the process of thinking about what they wanted the postwar world to look like. President Roosevelt’s decision in early 1942 to demand “unconditional surrender” from its enemy set the conditions for the rest of the war.

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Unlike the war in Asia, America’s war in the European theater required repeated compromises and discussions with allies like the Soviet Union, Britain, and Canada. This lecture will use the case study of the most famous military operation, Operation Overlord (D-Day).

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This lecture will look at the American war in Asia. Since we are in San Diego, it will have a focus on the Navy’s Central Pacific strategy.

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This session examines excerpts from The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt and selected essays from Roosevelt’s The Strenuous Life. The purpose of the session is to consider the role character, self-discipline, moral decency, and grit play in the formation and education of a young statesman.

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Woodrow Wilson, the only political science professor to be president of the United States, thought deeply and published widely as a scholar of the American political order and its history. As a teacher, scholar, and president of Princeton University, Wilson emerged as a leading Progressive thinker, advancing a reinterpretation of the American constitutional order as an evolving, organic charter for a changing country. How Wilson thought about the Constitution, and about the role of the presidency in its adaptation, will be the focus of this session.

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Winning a war, the adage goes, is easier than winning the peace. This lecture will look at the end of the war and the astonishingly complex world it created. We will look at the Potsdam conference where the British, Americans, and Soviets reshaped the world.

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The end of the war almost immediately led to further conflict from Malaya to Korea to China to Indochina (Vietnam). The Chinese Civil War in particular had massive repercussions that we are still feeling today.

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The American diplomat George Kennan warned in early 1946 that while the West saw the Second World War as a great victory, the Russians saw it differently. The war, he warned, would increase the paranoia and fear inside the Soviet system. While the United States and Europe would seek peace, the Soviets would prepare for another round of war. We can see the origins of the Cold War and even Putin’s worldview in the legacies of the Second World War.

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The disasters of the twentieth century seemed to undermine the possibilities of enlightened, democratic statesmanship, and threatened to replace them with a new, totalitarian brand of statesmanship. The miracle that delivered Europe from those disasters belongs almost entirely to statesmen of re-founding—especially Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Margaret Thatcher, and Václav Havel. Have we now run out of statesmen and statecraft?
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This lecture and discussion will explore the early life of Abraham Lincoln, from his birth in a log cabin through meeting Mary Todd. It will explore the personal obstacles he overcame, including his lack of formal education and loss of loved ones, and conclude with a discussion of his famous 1838 Lyceum Address.
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In addition to the core questions, this lecture/discussion will address the militia tradition and constituting armies; the roles of enslaved or formerly enslaved men and of women; the profound social impact of war on civilian society; death, injury, and survival; and the process of accounting for the dead and commemorating those lost, including the ongoing political implications of how the Civil War is remembered.

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John A. Lupton, a historian of Abraham Lincoln’s legal career, will discuss the project that compiled Lincoln’s legal papers, provide a brief overview of Lincoln’s law practice, and dive into what Lincoln thought of the legal profession through his Lincoln’s Notes for a Law Lecture to illustrate how Lincoln’s law practice provided him steady income, political benefit, and professional stature.
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This lecture and discussion will explore the infamous Dred Scott decision to see how Lincoln’s response to it helped push his Springfield neighbors toward a greater understanding of equality.
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In addition to the core questions, this lecture/discussion will address military professionalization; the new importance of testing and data; contemporary ideas about masculinity and military service; technology and combat; the first women serving in uniform; and the creation of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

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The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important and yet most misunderstood documents in American history. In this session, attendees will explore Lincoln’s path to emancipation and discuss that edict’s significance.
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In addition to the core questions, this lecture/discussion will acknowledge the reach and range of military service; the function of the draft; the wide variety of military service across the globe; the role of technology; the creation of the Women’s Army Corps; the use of a racially segregated military; and the GI Bill, the experience of homecoming, and notions of “the greatest generation.” We will view brief segments of the documentary Why We Fight: War Comes to America and of the Hollywood film The Best Years of Our Lives.

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Join us for a panel discussion on African Americans, Race, and Abraham Lincoln at the End of the Civil War. Panel members include Leonne Hudson (Professor of History, Kent State University), Kelly Mezurek (Professor of History, Walsh University), Christian McWhirter (Lincoln Historian, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library), and Brian Mitchell (Director of Research and Interpretation, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library).
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In addition to the core questions, this lecture/discussion will include the experience of fighting an increasingly unpopular war; the draft and the move to an all-volunteer force; US military nurses; race relations and racial tensions within the US military; the variety of military experience in the war; and homecoming and the controversies surrounding the Vietnam memorial(s).

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This lecture and discussion will explore Lincoln’s suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Attendees will read and discuss critiques from wartime Democrats as well as Lincoln’s most famous defense of his controversial actions.
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November 8, 1864, stands out as one of the most remarkable days in American history. Never before—nor since—had the nation held a presidential election in the midst of a terrible civil war. This lecture and discussion will explore the momentous steps that took place in the lead-up to this pivotal election, ranging from the battlefield to the nominating conventions to the creation of mechanisms for absentee voting.
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