Teaching for Statesmanship

As teachers across the country mark Civic Learning Week in March, we invite you to join a distinguished panel of Jack Miller Center scholars for a conversation about incorporating the serious study of statesmanship into both K-12 and college curriculum.

What can America’s great leaders teach us about citizenship today? How do their decisions reveal the enduring principles of our political tradition? And how can the next generation of leaders attain the intellectual grounding needed for statesmanship in the 21st century?

Join us on Tuesday, March 11, at 3:00 PM for a webinar on teaching statesmanship with Jack Miller Center president Hans Zeiger, Princeton University’s Shilo Brooks, and Catholic University of America’s Michael Promisel. This live webinar is free and open to the public.

Recommended Reading

The Education of a Statesman, by Hans Zeiger – In this National Affairs essay, Zeiger argues that the best way to combat the declining trust in public institutions is to reform civic education to prepare Americans for genuine self-government. “More important than any scholarly research agenda,” he argues, ‘is the actual teaching of statesmanship, as understood by Cicero, Washington, the authors of The Federalist, and many other great leaders throughout history.”

This ‘Cowboy’ Wants to Teach Princeton Kids About Greatness, by Frannie Block – Last year, a reporter from The Free Press profiled Shilo Brooks and his popular course “The Art of Statesmanship and the Political Life.” Through “deep dives” into the autobiographies and speeches of ancient and modern statesmen, Brooks says he hopes students can learn about the enduring wisdom of the Western and American traditions.

Shilo Brooks is Executive Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

He is author of Nietzsche’s Culture War, in addition to scholarly and journalistic articles on a variety of topics in politics and the humanities. His teaching and research interests lie in the history of political philosophy, politics and literature, and statesmanship.

He was previously Associate Faculty Director of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization and Faculty Director of the Engineering Leadership Program at the University of Colorado. Brooks has also held appointments as Visiting Professor of Government at Bowdoin College, Fellow in the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia, and Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton. He received his PhD in political science from Boston College and his BA in liberal arts from the Great Books Program at St. John’s College, Annapolis.
 

Michael Promisel is Assistant Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America. He teaches courses spanning ancient Greek, Medieval, and American political thought and his research draws on these traditions to reflect on timely questions concerning leadership, virtue, liberal education, and Catholic social thought.

During the 2023 – 2024 academic year, he was the Busch Family Visiting Fellow at the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame. His scholarship has appeared in the Review of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Political Science Reviewer, and Polis: The Journal of Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought. Dr. Promisel earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a B.A. in Government from the University of Virginia.