News, Media & Publications

The 1825 rendering of Monticello with which Kinder Institute Distinguished Research Fellow Christa Dierksheide began her December 1 Friday Colloquium Series presentation framed the talk both because of what it depicted and what it didn’t. A vision of pastoral 19th-century domesticity and whiteness, we see two of Jefferson’s granddaughters strolling the mansion’s front lawn while […]

A term both inspiring and misunderstood, ‘freedom’ holds a particular place in the historical and lexical narrative of the United States, where its meaning is rooted as much in a right to enslave as it is in a defense of liberty. What would it take, UVA James Hart Professor of Politics Lawrie Balfour asked in […]

“I’m gonna tell you everything you need to know about…local government. ‘Life, Liberty, and Property.’ John Locke.” —Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation Though not necessarily the most reliable narrator—at the very least, not the most ideologically neutral one—Ron Swanson does capture Locke’s uniquely central place in American culture and the American political imagination today. His […]

So much of political discourse in the United States focuses on two-, four-, and six-year election cycles. Yet, so much of politics happens outside of them. As a way to both broaden and refine the conception of political time, University of Cambridge Paul Mellon Professor of American History Gary Gerstle, the Kinder Institute’s 2023 James […]

There are any number of contradictions that can trace their roots back to the Espionage Act. It’s the final legal backstop propping up America’s secrecy regime, yet it’s repeatedly been at the center of the crises of legitimacy this regime has faced over time (for recent examples, see: Trump/Mar-a-Lago, Biden/Garage, Clinton/Server). In the 21st century […]

As an undergraduate, Paul Odu did more or less everything that the Kinder Institute offers Mizzou students. He was in the Society of Fellows and wrote for the Journal on Constitutional Democracy; he studied in D.C. as a member of the Kinder Scholars Program and at Corpus Christi College as our 2021-22 Oxford Fellow; he […]