2025 SCETL Annual Spring Conference: Jeremy Black

The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) hosts an annual conference to invite scholars, prominent writers, and speakers to come together each spring to discuss the school’s speaker series topic. American political order emerged from a wider crisis in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic world that brought the founding of the United States.  Shared triumph in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) won British mastery of North America and ended threats to the colonies posed by France from Canada.  Americans celebrated their ties to Britain with figures from Benjamin Franklin to John Adams embracing opportunities it seemed to provide.  But within a decade, widespread protests against taxes and regulation became an open revolt with the famous shots fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. What brought this remarkable change?  Our conference will explore how and why a transformation replaced the British crown with an American political order that eventually secured the independence claimed in 1776.