JMC Programs

Reaching beyond campus borders to provide resources and support for our national community of professors and educators

Overview

 

Summer Institutes are instrumental to building a nationwide community of scholars committed to expanding student access to courses in America’s founding principles. We began in 2007 with 125 faculty partners and today have developed a network of 1,000+ JMC Fellows on over 300 college campuses across the country.

Led by renowned scholars, Summer Institutes are the entry point into our faculty network. These annual events give promising young scholars the opportunity to enrich their knowledge by reflecting upon and discussing the ideas, issues, and questions from the American past and Western tradition.

Past Summer Institute faculty have included:

  • James Ceaser
    University of Virginia
  • Daniel Cullen
    Rhodes College
  • Ioannis Evrigenis
    Tufts University
  • Michael Gillespie
    Duke University
  • Benjamin Kleinerman
    Baylor University
  • Wilfred McClay
    Hillsdale College
  • Diana Schaub
    Loyola University, Maryland
  • Rogers Smith
    University of Pennsylvania
  • Steven Smith
    Yale University
  • George Thomas
    Claremont McKenna College
  • Jeffrey Tulis
    University of Texas, Austin
  • Gordon Wood
    Brown University
  • Michael Zuckert
    University of Notre Dame
  • Each year, the Jack Miller Center’s Excellence in Civic Education Award recognizes one K-12 teacher and one professor for extraordinary teaching and student engagement.

    The results of teaching efforts can be difficult to quantify, so we look for actual examples of teachers engaging in the important work of engaging, educating, and inspiring students while fostering civil discourse and critical thinking.

    JMC believes that excellent teaching is critically important for America’s future. Our self-governing nation is dependent upon an informed and engaged citizenry if we are to preserve our constitutional democracy.

    Read more about the award and meet this year’s winners >>

    The JMC Lincoln Symposium in American Political Thought is an annual workshop that gives professors a rare opportunity to have their written pieces reviewed and discussed by fellow scholars prior to submission for publication.

    Held in Portland, the 2021 program was made possible by a generous grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust as part of our Pacific Northwest (PNW) Initiative. Professors from the PNW region along with other scholars from around the country examined each others’ work. Topics ranged from the Federalist and libertarianism to works on particular figures, like Mark Twain, Barry Goldwater, and Martin Luther King Jr.

    The Jeffersonian Seminar Series brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines and fields for a two-day colloquium to discuss the ideas and institutions that shaped the American Founding.  The goal of JMC’s Jeffersonian Seminar Series is to develop academic communities in specific regions across the country.

    – Selected Past Seminars –

  • "Lincoln's Constitutional Statesmanship" (New York, NY)
    In partnership with the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions, Yale University
  • "The First Amendment, Freedom of Conscience, and Liberty of the Press" (Columbia, MO)
    In partnership with the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri
  • "The Founders and International Relations: Security and the Rule of Law in the 18th Century Atlantic World" (Washington, D.C.)
  • "Strategic Interactions: 18th Century Principles and 21st Century American Global Interests" (Chicago, IL)
  • "Liberty, Emancipation, and the Rule of Law" (Portland, OR)
  • "Commerce and Character" (Columbus, OH)
  • The JMC Annual National Summit on Higher Education brings together scholars, philanthropists, and others from around the country to share ideas on how to build and develop academic centers on campuses focused on advancing education in America’s political thought and history.

    The 2019 National Summit focused on the topic “Should America’s Colleges Teach Patriotism?” An all-star panel, moderated by board member Bill Kristol, included Peter Berkowitz (The Hoover Institution), Elizabeth Busch (Christopher Newport University), and Robert Ingram (Ohio University). John Agresto, former President of St. John’s College, gave the keynote address, discussing how patriotism might be understood in a nation founded on individualism and equal rights more than ties of blood, religion, or ethnicity.

     

    June 2016 marked the finale of the Commercial Republic Initiative, JMC’s three-year national interdisciplinary project to enrich teaching and scholarship on campuses from MIT to UCLA.

    Made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Commercial Republic Initiative advanced the study of the central ideas of enterprise, commerce, law and science that emerged during the 18th century—ideas that critically influenced the American Founders, shaping their experiment in constitution making.

    Read more here >>

     

    By congressional mandate, colleges receiving federal funds are required to hold an educational program each year on Constitution Day, September 17. These events are excellent opportunities to engage an entire student body in discussion on the Constitution, but many schools lack the resources to mount a substantive program. As a result of JMC’s Constitution Day Initiative, thousands of students have the opportunity to examine critical and timely constitutional questions with real experts and policy-makers.

    Read more here >>