The mission of the James Madison Program’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship is to discern, understand and critique the substance and style of statesmanship in modern democratic societies; to encourage the study of statesmanship in the Anglo-American political tradition, as it was inherited from the Greek and Roman classical past, through the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the Civil War and the World Wars, to the present; and to present the findings of leading scholars of this statesmanship in public forums which will assist the general public in understanding and supporting examples of statesmanlike behavior in modern political environments.
Meet the Director
Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is a New York Times® best-seller author, American historian and commentator on public issues. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science…
Statesmanship Events
The James Madison Summer Seminar on the Theory and Practice of Statesmanship
Statesmanship in American History
Dates: July 14-19, 2024
Location: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Participants: 8th–12th grade teachers
Application Deadline: March 5, 2024
Notification Deadline: April 5, 2024
Supported by the Jack Miller Center
In cooperation with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and hosted and funded by the James Madison Program, the Statesmanship in American History summer seminar will allow up to 20 high school teachers to participate in a weeklong professional development event on the study of statecraft. The seminar will be taught by Dr. Allen Guelzo, Dr. Shilo Brooks, Dr. Matthew J. Franck, and Nathan McAlister.
Statesmanship, or statecraft, is the pursuit of politics at the highest level, beyond the levels of organization, mobilization, planning, and leadership. In these turbulent and polarized times, Americans need statecraft more than ever, and, more than ever, we need to know what it is, how it can be recognized, and whether it can be cultivated. From George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass to the present day, we will consider who our statesmen have been, and what our students need to know to understand the difficult art of political statecraft.
Applications will be reviewed by Gilder Lehrman Institute and James Madison Program staff.
The seminar will be held off-campus at the Chauncey Conference Center where participants will be housed for the duration of the program. Opportunities will be available to visit historic Princeton and the campus.
To apply, click here. Please email us at [email protected] if you have questions.
For more information, please see the Gilder Lehrman website.