As part of Jonathan\u00a0M. Tisch College of Civic Life\u2019s 2026 event programming,\u00a0professors from the history and political science departments gathered for a panel on Feb. 26\u00a0to answer one question: Given your area of expertise, what is on your mind as the United States approaches the milestone of 250 years?<\/p>\n
Panelists included history professors David Ekbladh and Paul Polgar; political science professors Eitan Hersh, Meredith McLain, Pearl Robinson and Deborah Schildkraut; and Peter Levine, a Lincoln Filene professor of Citizenship &\u00a0Public Affairs.<\/p>\n
Organized\u00a0in part by Tisch College, the Department of Political Science, the International Relations Program, the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education and the Department of History, the event was spearheaded by Schildkraut,\u00a0the John Richard Skuse professor of political science.\u00a0With an area of study focused largely on American public opinion and politics, Schildkraut\u00a0said she was\u00a0inclined to organize an event where students could learn from various perspectives\u00a0at a turning point in American history, as she has done in the past with post-election discussions. She noted her approach in crafting the panel, with the goal of emphasizing student questions\u00a0rather than solely faculty input and representing a diverse array of perspectives.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The balance\u00a0between\u00a0student engagement and faculty input]\u00a0becomes a challenge in the event because we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of wonderful faculty doing interesting and important research,\u201d Schildkraut said. \u201cThere [are] so many people I want to ask and so many important topics to cover, and there are lots of important topics that we didn\u2019t get to cover at all on our panel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0panelists were each given five minutes\u00a0to share their perspectives, with each offering unique insight into topics like\u00a0presidential and congressional power, identity and belonging, voting and revolutionary history.\u00a0Students were later given the opportunity to ask questions, both regarding what was stated by professors and about concerns of their own.<\/p>\n
Drawing on his expertise in U.S. history, Ekbladh\u00a0reflected on the American Revolution and how its modern interpretation shapes civic nationalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a whole school [of thought] that the [American] Revolution\u00a0[was] the\u00a0first real modern revolution. It sets a template with that declaration. Anybody petitioning for independence has to make a case, and that carries down into the present,\u201d Ekbladh said. \u201cBut I also think that we\u2019re still trying to tell ourselves and tell the world what it meant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ekbladh\u00a0also encouraged students to question the more heroic underdog narrative surrounding the birth of the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actual past sometimes doesn\u2019t actually reflect what we want it to be in the present,\u201d Ekbladh said. \u201cWe should ask ourselves why we\u2019re always contorting this very complicated thing, sometimes for very simple narratives in the present.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
There were contrasting views on the panel as well, most notably between Hersh and Levine. Hersh emphasized a more positive outlook on what he referred to as America\u2019s \u201cgolden age of electoral democracy,\u201d noting increased voter turnout and accessibility as evidence of America\u2019s\u00a0strong civic engagement, despite conspiracies from both right and left that question and delegitimize this process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings\u00a0are going really well, but a lot of people don\u2019t think it is, and that\u2019s the thing that\u2019s making us fragile right now. Because of how our media is and because of how polarized we are, we\u2019re not able to hold the center and figure out how things are actually going,\u201d Hersh said.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Levine\u00a0regarded the 250th anniversary as the creation\u00a0of the U.S. Constitution,\u00a0yet a constitution that\u00a0is in active danger of collapse. He noted the problematic nuances\u00a0of the presidential system, the element\u00a0of a \u2018fourth\u2019 branch\u00a0of government, administrative agencies as well as the fact that there has been much less legislative progress through Congress, along with an absence of lasting policies.<\/p>\n
It is evident that scholars and Americans alike are considering governmental structures as a defining moment for the nation at 250 years old. McLain, who specializes in this area, expressed similar concerns\u00a0about the problematic nature of the current branches and their shares of power.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on America\u2019s institutional progress\u00a0over the years, she noted that presidential power as the most changed, with five times as many cabinet departments\u00a0since the first convention, as well as the shifting power dynamic between Congress and the presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow\u00a0we see a lot more gridlock than we previously did, and often that\u2019s not necessarily the result of the president\u00a0taking power, but Congress giving power,\u201d McLain said, speaking on Levine\u2019s points about increased difficulty in passing laws.<\/p>\n
McLain\u00a0offered\u00a0the example of tariffs\u00a0and mentioned that even when Congress has tried to reclaim power, like with the\u00a0War Powers Act of 1973,\u00a0the effort has failed to be effective. Addressing these concerns, she turned to the audience and asked what Americans, as active participants\u00a0in democracy, want presidential power to look like over the next 250 years.<\/p>\n
Returning to the historical perspective were Polgar and Robinson. Polgar\u00a0revisited the revolution, explaining how it created space for the\u00a0abolitionist movement through its theme of liberation\u00a0while also witnessing the pseudoscience of race evolving to justify slavery. He noted that over time, schools of thought from classrooms to museums have embraced the multi-faceted nature of the revolution\u00a0in both its glory and its failures. He critiqued movements toward a \u2018simpler\u2019 unidimensional\u00a0and nationalist interpretation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0really important that, in forums like this and beyond, that we really assert the richness of the revolution because those tensions, those ambiguities, those contradictions, didn\u2019t just happen in 1775 or\u00a0[1776].\u00a0We\u2019re living with those today,\u201d Polgar said.<\/p>\n
Moving beyond the revolutionary era, Robinson touched\u00a0on her defining moments as an American, particularly growing up as a young Black woman in\u00a0racially segregated New Orleans, La. at the end of World War II. She noted her experiences facing inequality and racism as part of the nation\u2019s past 250 years, yet she chooses to see the anniversary as a new beginning. Robinson also emphasized the importance of panels like this and expressed the need to get the conversation into popular culture, especially among young people.<\/p>\n
Wrapping up the conversation was organizer Schildkraut, who posed the timely question of \u201cwho belongs.\u201d\u00a0Her work focuses largely on how Americans\u2019 state identities are connected to who they are and how they fit into the larger country.\u00a0She acknowledged that she resonated with each of the panelists\u2019 perspectives, but also expressed her own questions about how the structure has changed, and to what extent they are similar to past episodes or genuinely different.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething that I think about a lot these days [is] that democracy is always fragile,\u201d Schildkraut said. \u201cI wonder if political life today is mainly a continuation of that reality, or [if] what we\u2019re experiencing now [is] more intractable.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the United States embraces this turning point, professors encouraged students to think about the world around them as it changes, accepting the ambiguity that comes with the country\u2019s contested narratives. Reflecting on the panel later, Ekbladh\u00a0expressed appreciation for the turnout and engagement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a professor, you\u2019ve got your own life and other things going on, and you can\u2019t always be plugged into campus, but it\u2019s really nice [that] outside of class, \u2026 [you] can have an intellectual discussion with \u2026 students who are very smart and incisive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of Jonathan\u00a0M. Tisch College of Civic Life\u2019s 2026 event programming,\u00a0professors from the history and political science…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-514385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}