The U.S. Constitution is a world-historical achievement yet also a fragile experiment in self-government. As we embark upon what should be two decades of commemorating our founding era, America at 250, we need a renewal of serious civic education – including the complex kind of “reflective patriotism” Tocqueville identified and praised when visiting us in the 1830’s. We must blend love of country with a rational element of civic knowledge about, and civil disagreement within the parameters of, our complex constitutional order.
This event is open and free to the community.
About the Speaker
Dr. Paul Carrese
Paul Carrese is Director, Center for American Civics (2025 - ) and professor in the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University, serving as its founding director 2016 to 2023. Formerly he was a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, co-founding its honors program. He teaches and publishes on the American founding, American constitutional and political thought, civic education, and American grand strategy. His most recent book is Teaching America: Reflective Patriotism in Schools, College, and Culture (Cambridge, 2026). He has held fellowships at Oxford (Rhodes Scholar); Harvard; University of Delhi (Fulbright); and the James Madison Program, Princeton. He served on the advisory board of the Program on Public Discourse at UNC Chapel Hill; co-led a national study, Educating for American Democracy, on civics in K-12 schools (2021); was a fellow of the Civitas Institute, UT Austin; and served on the Civic Education Committee, American Political Science Association. He serves on the Academic Council of the Jack Miller Center for America’s Founding Principles and History, on advisory boards at University of South Carolina and Georgia Institute of Technology, and the APSA Council. He is a Senior Fellow with the Jack Miller Center, and in 2025 and 2026 a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.