EVENTS
“The People, the President, and the Constitution,” July 22 Civil Dialogues Event at the Kansas City Public Library | 07/22/2025
RSVP HERE In 2024, Jean Becker, George H.W. Bush’s post-presidential chief-of-staff, and award-winning journalist Linda Lorelle co-founded the Civil Dialogues project with the idea that creating a forum for respectful conversations about difficult topics, often the topics that divide us, might help knit the nation back together and encourage greater political participation. As part of […]
“Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography,” September 12 Colloquium with Kinder-Oxford Fellow Tom Arnold-Foster | 09/12/2025
To kick off the Kinder Institute’s Fall 2025 Colloquium Series, Prof. Tom Arnold-Foster, the Kinder Career Development Fellow at Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute, will preview his new Princeton University Press monograph, Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography, which traces Lippmann’s wide-ranging influence on American politics as both a journalist and political theorist. The talk will be […]
“What the Constitution Means to Me,” James E. Fleming & Linda C. McClain Constitution Day Performance, Starring MU Alum Megan Murphy Chambers (September 17-21) | 09/21/2025
PURCHASE TICKETS HERE The annual James E. Fleming & Linda C. McClain Constitution Day Lecture is taking a new form this year. Rather than put on a public talk, for the eighth iteration of the event, the Kinder Institute has partnered with the MU Department of Theatre and Performance Studies to bring Heidi Schreck’s acclaimed […]
“Tilting at Windmills? Valiant Efforts to Restore Civility to the U.S. House of Representatives, 1996-2004,” September 26 Colloquium with Historian and MU Alum Frank H. Mackaman | 09/26/2025
Frank H. Mackaman, Historian Emeritus at the Dirksen Congressional Leadership Research Center and an alum of Mizzou’s History Ph.D. program, will return to his former stomping grounds on September 26 for a talk exploring the backstory behind a small group of congresspeople’s recent attempts to promote civility in the U.S. House of Representatives and the […]
“The US at 250 from South Africa,” October 14 Kinder Institute Global 250 Lecture Series Kickoff with former South African Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs | 10/14/2025
To celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States, the Kinder Institute will bring scholars from around the globe to Columbia throughout the Spring 2026 semester to share thoughts on the nation’s semi-quincentennial anniversary from an international vantage point. Providing a preview of what’s to come, prominent lawyer and anti-Apartheid activist Albie Sachs will visit […]
“From Columbia to Colombia: A Cultural Appropriation of Liberty in the Age of Revolutions, 1775-1807,” October 31 Colloquium with University of Texas-Austin Prof. Lina del Castillo | 10/31/2025
Mapping “Columbian” and “Colombian” imaginaries onto one another, University of Texas Associate Professor of History and Latin American Studies Lina del Castillo’s talk will examine how the goddess Columbia’s inclusive armies that Phillis Wheatley Peters evokes in “His Excellency General Washington” re-appear, in appropriated form, in the multi-racial Colombian forces of liberation forged by Francisco […]
“Sociality as Activist Intervention: Exploring Constitutional Antislavery in the Lives of Anna Murray Douglass, Angelina Grimké, and Charlotte Forten,” November 14 Colloquium with University of Michigan’s Mariah Zeisberg | 11/14/2025
University of Michigan Associate Professor of Political Science Mariah Zeisberg’s colloquium series presentation will explore the lives and work of Anna Murray Douglass, Angelina Grimké, and Charlotte Forten to show how sociality, family-making, and household politics were used by all three as transformative forms of constitutional activism that advanced the goals of the 19th-century antislavery […]
“St. George Tucker and the Invention of the Written Constitution,” December 5 Colloquium with KICD Distinguished Visiting Research Professor Max M. Edling | 12/05/2025
Reviving a fall tradition from years past, King’s College London Professor Max Edling, in Columbia during 2025-26 as the Kinder Institute’s Distinguished Visiting Research Professor, will end the semester with a presentation of his research, traveling back to founding era Williamsburg to examine William & Mary Professor St. George Tucker’s central role in championing the […]