When Ohio University professors Brian Schoen and Robert Ingram won a $20,000 grant for their George Washington Forum, they knew it put them in great academic company.
The forum - which consists of a three-part speaker series beginning tonight - is the first to receive funding from the Jack Miller Center by a non-Ivy League school.
In addition to the grant, OU's 1804 fund, established by the Board of Trustees to support programming promoting the university's academic mission, chipped in another $21,400.
The series will explore a variety of topics related to educational freedom and American ideals, and will conclude with a conference in April.
We're bringing in top-notch scholars in the field and giving (the students) a chance to meet them
said Schoen, assistant professor of history. He added that forum speakers will meet with the freshmen Liberal Arts Learning Community.
Tonight's forum, titled Liberating the Liberal Arts: On Re-learning the Art of Being Free will feature a speech by Patrick J. Deneen, an associate professor at Georgetown University. The speech will address the usefulness of a liberal arts education and the arguable restrictions and freedoms education provokes.
The series' other topics and speakers include British resistance to American colonialism by Jack Greens, emeritus professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, and Habeas Corpus by Paul Halliday, associate professor of history at the University of Virginia.
Halliday's research on Habeas Corpus and other international law was recently cited in Supreme Court case dealing with human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay.
Ingram, founding director of the forum, said he hopes the series will help students understand what it means to be a global citizen.
Money from the grant is also being used to design an academic course, Atlantic Revolutions, to coincide with the topics discussed at all three forums. Schoen says that he hopes the class will help students understand how the American Revolution fits in context of the other revolutions going on at the time.
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Rosie Haney
