Upcoming Program: Monday, September 14, 2026 – Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Program
Weiss Center, Rubendall Recital Hall, 7 p.m.
Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Program
Freedom is Made Safe … Through Character and Learning
Jane E. Calvert, The John Dickinson Writings Project
Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School
The Clarke Forum and the Department of Music present Jane Calvert (author of Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson) and Jeff Rosen (CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center) for an evening of conversation and performance celebrating Constitution Day. Organized by Dickinson Professor of Music, Jennifer Blyth, readings from Calvert’s book form the basis of a discussion that will be complemented by performed versions of “The Liberty Song,” and some original compositions from Jeff Rosen’s podcast on “The Pursuit of Happiness.” The evening will be followed by a reception and book signing with Jane Calvert.
The program is presented by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Department of Music. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s annual theme, Revolutions.
Biographies (provided by the speakers)
Dr. Jane E. Calvert is founding director and chief editor of The John Dickinson Writings Project (JDP). She received her Ph.D. in early American history from the University of Chicago in 2003. Her work focuses on the intersection of theology and political thought in the Colonial and Founding eras, especially theories and practices of rights advocacy and resistance to governmental oppression. With grants and fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), among other supporters, she published her first monograph, Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson (Cambridge, 2009), which is the first study of its kind on both Quakerism and Dickinson. It explores the origins of civil disobedience in seventeenth-century Quakerism and Dickinson’s advocacy of this tradition of peaceful resistance during the American Founding.
Dr. Calvert taught history for twenty-five years at several institutions, including St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Yale University. In 2024, she began working full time on the JDP, which is funded by federal agencies and private foundations, to produce The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson (University of Delaware Press). With four of an estimated thirteen volumes completed, this edition contains among the most important documents of the Founding era, many of which were unknown and unstudied. The first two volumes were awarded “Best Historical Materials for 2020–21” from the American Library Association. Based on this work, and with support from an NEH Public Scholars Grant and the State of Delaware, Calvert published Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson (Oxford University Press, 2024), the first complete and accurate biography of Dickinson, which won the James Kirby Martin History Prize, the Herbert J. Storing Book Prize, the Harry M. Ward Book Prize, the American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia Book Award, and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. Reporting on her work has been featured on the front page of the New York Times and by the Associated Press.
Jeffrey Rosen is the CEO emeritus of the National Constitution Center, a senior fellow at FIRE, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. Rosen is the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Pursuit of Happiness and Conversations with RBG. His new book is The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America. He wrote the music and lyrics for two song cycles, “The Golden Mean: Songs for the Pursuit of Happiness” and “Twelve Titans: Songs of the Greek Gods and Goddesses,” which were arranged by Greg Strohman and performed in 2025 by Jennifer Blyth and James Martin of the Dickinson College Music Department at the American Philosophical Society, where is an elected member.
Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Program
The annual program is endowed through the generosity of Winfield C. Cook, former Dickinson Trustee. Each year the Clarke Forum invites prominent public figures to campus to speak on a contemporary issue related to the Constitution. The event celebrates the signing of the United States Constitution (September 17, 1787) and commemorates Dickinson’s connection to that document, through John Dickinson’s participation as an original signer. Previous speakers have included Kenneth Starr, Ira Glasser, Lowell Weicker, Marjorie Rendell, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Ibram X. Kendi.