The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University released the first flight of lectures from its USA@250 course, a sweeping interdisciplinary exploration of United States democracy, offered free to the public in recognition of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

The inaugural flight, titled Foundations and comprised of four lectures examining the origins of the U.S. republic, is now available on Maxwell’s YouTube channel. The remaining nine lectures will be released in the days ahead in three additional flights titled: Shaping a Nation, Issues in Focus and Modern Challenges.

The Foundations lectures are:

• The British Empire, presented by Tessa Murphy, explores the state of all the colonies in the Americas, including the Caribbean and what later became Canada, at the time of the revolution and the move for independence.
• The Declaration of Independence, presented by Carol Faulkner, starts with the motivations of main author Thomas Jefferson, details the document’s structure, and shows how it inspired an “age of declarations” that spanned the next seventy years.
• The American Revolution, presented by Alan Allport, dispels some of the widely held beliefs or “myths” about the war while building a deeper understanding of the Continental Army’s tactics, training and strategy, and how that laid the foundation for the modern American military.
• The Constitution, presented by Andrew Cohen, discusses the uniqueness of the government that was created, as well as the ways it was designed to tame some of the impulses and expectations fomented during the rise to revolution.

All four presenters are faculty members in Maxwell’s History Department whose research and teaching span the political, social and imperial dimensions of the founding era.

“Celebrating 250 years since our nation’s founding, this series of lectures is inspired by the Maxwell School's mission of citizenship and public affairs,” says Carol Faulkner, professor of history and organizer of the lecture series. “While we are not able to cover everything, we will discuss some key events and key issues, and the central question we consider throughout the lecture series is: How has the United States lived up to its founding principles of equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”

Not intended to be a full course on U.S. history, the lecture series taps into faculty expertise at Maxwell to explore a range of issues important to the U.S. experience and quite relevant today, from the founding documents and the American Revolution, to immigration, women’s rights and the state of democracy itself.

Originally offered as an in-person and online course during the Spring 2026 semester, USA@250 drew on an interdisciplinary array of Maxwell faculty from the History, Political Science, Anthropology, and Public Administration and International Affairs departments, as well as an alumnus. Close to 50 students took the original 1-credit course, with another 600 members of the public registering to watch the original lectures live.

The majority of those lectures have now been re-recorded for easier public viewing and release, along with a few of the original classroom lectures that are among those to be publicly released.

No fee or registration is required to watch and listen to the lectures. And all lectures will be available on Maxwell’s YouTube channel.

Subscribe to Maxwell School’s YouTube channel or follow us on social media to know when the next flight is released.