The Maxwell School will continue its examination and celebration of America’s 250th anniversary with a one-day interdisciplinary research conference, “Agents of Change: Leadership, Scholarship, and the American Experience at 250,” on Friday, Oct. 16. As the event falls on Family Weekend, students and their parents are encouraged to attend.

The free conference brings together top scholars from across Maxwell, the University and beyond, along with staff and students to explore the ideas, policies and institutions that have shaped the United States and will influence its future. Topics include leadership, democratic development, economic transformation, cultural life and social change.

“The 250th anniversary is a moment to ask not only where the country has been, but who has driven it forward,” says conference organizer Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean and professor of political science. “This conference brings together scholars from many disciplines to look at the people, ideas and institutions that have been agents of change, and to ask what that history means for the next 250 years.”

The keynote, “Democracy and Governing in America at 250,” will be delivered by David C. Wilson, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California Berkeley and professor of public policy, at 9 a.m., after opening remarks from Maxwell Dean David M. Van Slyke. Wilson is a world-renowned political psychologist who studies how people form political preferences about race and justice, and he is co-author of Racial Resentment in the Political Mind (University of Chicago Press, 2022).  

After a student poster session and lunch, the second conversation, at 1:15 p.m., explores “Who Was/Is America?” and how ideas of democratic citizenship have expanded and contracted. Panelists include Sarah Pralle, associate professor of political science; Mark Brockway, assistant teaching professor of political science; and Thomas Pearson and Maria Zhu, assistant professors of economics; along with pollster John Zogby ’74 M.A. (Hist). Zogby has conducted research in 195 countries over four decades and is the author of three books, including The Way We’ll Be (Random House, 2008).

The third conversation, at 3:15 p.m., looks ahead at “American Institutions and American Democracy.” The discussion, moderated by Mark Schmeller, associate professor of history, will feature Van Slyke; Chris Faricy, associate professor of political science; Brittany Kmush, associate professor of public health; and Janet Wilmoth, Distinguished Professor of Sociology. A reflections session and reception will close the day at 5 p.m.

The conference is the latest in Maxwell’s USA@250 celebration, which began in January with a one-credit USA@250 course that drew close to 50 students in person and about 600 members of the public who registered to watch the lectures live for a semester-long, interdisciplinary look at our nation’s founding, changes and ongoing challenges. Most of those lectures were re-recorded and released free on YouTube this summer. In recent weeks, more than 75 alumni and guests gathered at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution, two blocks from where the Declaration of Independence was signed, to hear a special lecture by Maxwell’s Tessa Murphy, associate professor of history.

“Our entire USA@250 celebration this year is grounded in a single central question: How has the United States lived up to its founding principles of equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?” Van Slyke says.

For more information and to register, visit here. On-site registration and coffee begin at 8:30 a.m.