RIT hosts Statesmanship Colloquium April 10–11

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Allen Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and director of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College, is the keynote speaker for RIT’s Center for Statesmanship, Law and Liberty’s first annual colloquium April 10–11.

The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Law and Liberty at Rochester Institute of Technology presents its first annual colloquium, free and open to the public, April 10–11.

The keynote presentation, “Lincoln’s Statesmanship on the Emancipation Proclamation,” will be delivered by Allen Guelzo at 7 p.m. April 10 in Webb Auditorium, James E. Booth Hall.

Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College, is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America and Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America, all Lincoln Prize winners. His book, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, spent eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. His articles and essays have appeared in scholarly journals and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post, and he has been featured on National Public Radio, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In 2005, he was nominated by President Bush to the National Council on the Humanities, and in December, he was awarded the Medal of Honor from the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

On April 11, RIT’s Student Innovation Hall is the setting for talks by Frank Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who will discuss “Judicial Statesmanship” at 9 a.m.; and Joseph Fornieri, professor of political science and director of RIT’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Law and Liberty, who will present “Reviving Statesmanship,” at 10:30 a.m.

Also in Student Innovation Hall, artist and designer Wendy Allen will display “An Artist’s View of Lincoln’s Statesmanship.”

To close the colloquium, the RIT Orchestra will perform musical selections including Carr’s Federal Overture in D, Gould’s American Salute, and an arrangement of Battle Hymn of the Republic, at 5 p.m. in Allen Chapel, Schmitt Interfaith Center.

A $250,000 gift from former RIT Board of Trustees member Kraig Kayser, along with an affiliation agreement with the Alexander Hamilton Institute, helped to establish RIT’s non-partisan Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Law and Liberty. The center, housed within RIT’s political science department in the College of Liberal Arts, engages students, faculty, high school students and community members in a common quest to understand statesmanship as a distinguishing quality of political greatness while also exploring its role in a democratic republic under the Constitution.

For more information about the free presentation, go to the RIT Center for Statesmanship, Law and Liberty website or contact Fornieri at 585-475-5889 or jrfgsm@rit.edu.