What is the office of the citizen in contemporary American democracy? This panel will consider the understanding of the citizen from the time of the Founding to the present. How did the Founders understand the responsibilities and duties of the citizen in the new American Republic? What knowledge did they expect the citizen to have? What duties did they expect the citizen to perform? What was and is the role of active citizenship and public-spiritedness in American democracy?
The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. This panel will address the questions: who is a citizen under the American Constitution? What rights come from American citizenship?
What does it mean to be a citizen? The claim of liberal political thought represented most directly by John Locke, is that the state is an association of individuals with natural rights who contract with one another to protect those rights to life, liberty, and property in a peaceful society. For Rousseau, the citizen in the ancient sense is no longer possible, and instead, we must look for standards in nature to form citizens of the world.
A series inviting the people of the United States to deliberate together about the ingredients necessary for civic bridge building, reviving civic knowledge and civic participation, and engaging in institutional renewal. Citizenship and Civic Leadership in America is the latest season of "The Civic Discourse Project", an annual lecture series designed to bring top minds to Arizona State University to discuss the most pressing issues of our time.
Michael Zuckert, a Visiting Scholar at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, gave a virtual lecture on "The Sound of the Third Hand Clapping". Zuckert (BA, Cornell University; PhD, University of Chicago, 1974) is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, Editor of American Political Thought, and a Visiting Scholar at Arizona State University. He has published extensively in the areas of early modern political philosophy and American political thought.
This conversation with Angela Dillard, the Richard A. Meisler collegiate professor of Afroamerican & African studies at the University of Michigan, and Peter Myers, professor of political science and U.S. constitutional law, at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, will make the case that the Civil Rights Movement was marked by an intellectual and ideological diversity that incorporated a wide range of perspectives in debates about the nature of citizenship and the “proper” strategies for civil rights activism.
Immigration has played an important role in almost every era in U.S. history, but it is often at the center of contentious political and economic debate. What does it mean to “become an American?” What responsibilities do new immigrants have to their newly adopted country? On October 30, 2019 at Arizona State University, Reihan Salam and Tomás Jiménez discussed the importance of civic integration for new immigrants to the United States and why it is necessary for both the new American and his or her new country.
What is the role of the media in the renewal of our understanding of ourselves as citizens and participants in the American political order? What is the responsibility of the media in the promotion of civic literacy? David Leonhardt, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, and Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review, will discuss the role of the media in elevating civic literacy in a way that contributes to informed active citizenship.
What happens when a campaign is over? Daniel Scarpinato of the Ducey for Governor campaign, and Sarah Elliott of the Garcia Campaign, came to Arizona State University to share what they learned during the campaign and what they learned after the dust of the campaign had settled. The panel was co-moderated by The Arizona Republic's Maria Polletta, who covered the 2018 gubernatorial race and currently covers state politics.
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to the summer of 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. McConnell has held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU.