Annual Lecture
Each year the Abigail Adams Institute hosts a public lecture meant to introduce arguments and speakers who can expand the philosophical horizons of our audience and have them reimagine the intellectual and cultural possibilities of the present.
- R. R. Reno, Return of the Strong Gods
After the staggering slaughter of back-to-back world wars, the West embraced the ideal of the "open society." R. R. Reno argues that we are witnessing the return of the “strong gods”—the powerful loyalties that bind men to their homeland and to one another.
2019/2020 - DR. DANIEL J. MAHONEY, THE IDOL OF OUR AGE
The humanitarian impulse to regard modern man as the measure of all things has begun to corrupt Christianity itself. What is the difference between humanitarian and Christian thought? Dr. Daniel J. Mahoney lectures on the relationship between humanitarianism and Christianity.
2018/2019 - Dr. Peter Berkowitz, John Stuart Mill's Liberal Education
It is increasingly rare for colleges and universities to explain to students the purpose, structure, and content of liberal education, let alone provide one. John Stuart Mill's writings on liberty of thought and discussion, Socratic inquiry, and the aims and substance of liberal education provide an excellent introduction to the subject and illuminate the importance to liberal democracy in America of the reform of higher education.
2017/2018 - Dr. James Piereson, Genesis of Trump: The Cultural Legacy of the '60s
The year 1968 included two major assassinations, violent protests in big cities, upheavals on college campuses, a riot at the Democratic National Convention, all the while an unpopular war was raging in Vietnam. In this tumultuous atmosphere the country saw clear divisions between liberal and conservative culture. Fifty years later, Dr. James Piereson reflects on this division to explain the unexpected outcome of our country's most recent presidential election.
2016/2017 - Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy
An examination of the current challenges to the democratic project in the European Union and the United States.