{"id":545813,"date":"2026-03-26T05:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/545813\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T05:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:40:15","slug":"former-executive-director-of-james-madison-program-nominated-to-be-archivist-of-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/545813\/","title":{"rendered":"Former executive director of James Madison Program nominated to be Archivist of the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bradford P. Wilson, former Executive Director of the James Madison Program, was nominated<\/a> by President Donald Trump to be Archivist of the United States on March 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Archivist of the United States is the chief administrator of the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States. The position oversees the maintenance of foundational documents such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, manages presidential records, and establishes policies that determine which documents are preserved or made accessible to the public. The confirmation process for the role can take several months, including obtaining approval from the senate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not Dr. Wilson\u2019s first rodeo in Washington. In the 1980s, he spent three years as a research associate on the staff of two Chief Justices of the United States,\u201d Matthew Franck wrote to The Daily Princetonian. Wilson and Franck worked together at the Witherspoon Institute<\/a>, an off-campus conservative think tank in Princeton, for eight years. Franck was also the associate director of the James Madison Program from 2018\u201321.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wilson declined a request to comment from the \u2018Prince.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Franck also emphasized Wilson\u2019s qualifications outside of academia, including working alongside Chief Justices Warren Burger and William Rehnquist. He also worked on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Education. Wilson was also appointed by President Joe Biden to be a trustee of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation, which administers graduate-level fellowships to high school teachers.<\/p>\n

While at Princeton, Wilson worked on creating the James Madison Program with Professor of Politics Robert P. George. The program\u2019s mission<\/a> is to \u201cpromote teaching and scholarship in constitutional law and political thought.\u201d Wilson\u2019s role involved many of the day-to-day operations of the program, including finance and budget, hiring and supervision of staff, communication with the parent politics department, and more.<\/p>\n

Adam Thomas, the current director of the James Madison Program, described Wilson\u2019s role as \u201cthe number two in the organization beneath Professor George.\u201d Wilson served as Executive Director for approximately 20 years before retiring in August 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was, in a word, the man who got things done,\u201d Franck wrote. Franck noted that he \u201chad no idea that Wilson was being considered for the position,\u201d but was \u201cpleasantly surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The James Madison Program\u2019s events have at times emphasized themes commonly associated with conservative thought, as reflected<\/a> by event titles such as \u201cThe Case for Social Conservatism\u201d and \u201cWomen in the Conservative Movement,\u201d as well as lectures on topics like natural law and family policy.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s work focuses on constitutional law and American political thought. One of the projects he worked on at Princeton was editing anthologies of George Washington\u2019s<\/a> and Alexander Hamilton\u2019s<\/a> political writings for the Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

Thomas characterized Wilson\u2019s nomination as \u201ca culmination of his many years of work in civic education and a kind of life of scholarship devoted to studying American constitutional law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with Professor George, Wilson \u201cmore or less helped to build all the major programs and initiatives that we currently do,\u201d Thomas said, including visiting and postdoctoral fellowships, undergraduate programming, and public events.<\/p>\n

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Wilson also worked on summer programs for high school teachers of American history, high school students, and for undergraduates. Thomas described fulfilling Wilson\u2019s former role as having \u201cbig shoes to fill\u201d due to Wilson\u2019s influence on the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never known anyone with better judgment of people \u2014 a quality that is invariably reciprocated by the trust of those who work with him,\u201d Franck wrote.<\/p>\n

Clara Docherty is the assistant News editor for the \u2018Prince\u2019 leading faculty, graduate students, and alumni coverage. She is from Lafayette, NJ, and can be reached at clara.docherty[at]princeton.edu.<\/p>\n

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bradford P. Wilson, former Executive Director of the James Madison Program, was nominated by President Donald Trump to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545814,"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-545813","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\/545813","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=545813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}