Series of Institute speakers will reflect on ‘America at 250’
St. Olaf College’s Buntrock Institute for Freedom and Community will host a series of speakers on campus this fall to provide insight on America at 250: Founding Ideals, Pivotal Moments, and Current Challenges.
“This series represents an opportunity to connect historical debates that have animated the American experiment for two and a half centuries with the contemporary challenges that foreground public debate,” says St. Olaf Professor of Political Science Chris Chapp, the Morrison Family Director of the Buntrock Institute for Freedom and Community. He notes that the series will continue into the spring, and will examine issues including Indigenous rights, the obligations of citizenship, and America’s footprint abroad.
The events in the fall speaker series are free and open to the public, and most will also be streamed and available for on-demand viewing online.
In addition to public presentations, the fall speakers will visit St. Olaf classes, attend receptions, and present students with the opportunity to ask questions and engage with their work on a deeper level.
“This series represents an opportunity to connect historical debates that have animated the American experiment for two and a half centuries with the contemporary challenges that foreground public debate.”
— Chris Chapp
The fall series will officially launch on October 8 with a lecture by St. Olaf alum and University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Distinguished Professor of Political Science David Siemers ’91 titled Hate the Game, Not the Player: The Politics of Rumor, Innuendo, and Allegations of Crime. He will explore how calumnies — lies designed to destroy someone or something’s reputation — work, what makes them effective, and what we can do about them, if anything, in a liberal democracy. His talk will begin at 3:45 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons.
The series continues on October 22 with a lecture by University of Southern California Gould School of Law Dean Franita Tolson. Her talk, titled In Congress We Trust? 250 Years of ‘We the Voters’ in the American Democratic Experiment, will focus on how Congress quietly shaped American elections across more than a century of constitutional development. She will provide a new perspective on who truly governs our system of elections by showing that federal authority has been broad, lasting, and decisive. Her lecture will begin at 3:45 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons, and will be streamed online.
On October 29 the series will continue with a lecture by Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of History Lisa Tetrault titled When Women Won the Right to Vote: An American Fiction. A leading scholar of women’s suffrage, Tetrault will discuss how when women won passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, they did not win the right to vote. Contrary to popular assumption, the right to vote does not exist in the U.S. Constitution. Just what, then, did the women’s suffrage amendment accomplish? In clarifying this history, Tetrault positions 1920 as the middle of a much larger story about the curious — and largely unknown — absence of a constitutional voting right for all Americans. Her lecture will begin at 3:45 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons, and will be streamed online.
Following the midterm election, the series continues on November 16 with a lecture by Vanderbilt University Professor of Political Science John Sides titled The Bicentennial Midterm: What Happened in the 2026 Election and What It Means for American Democracy. He will discuss how the 2026 midterm election came at a precarious moment for American democracy on its 250th birthday. He will also explore what explains the election’s outcome, as well as what it tells us about the future of U.S. politics. His lecture will begin at 3:30 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons, and will be streamed online.
The series will conclude as it began, with a lecture by a distinguished alum. On December 10, Judge Eric Tostrud ’87 will deliver a talk titled Public Confidence: How the Judiciary Should Earn It (and What Lessons That Might Hold for the Political Branches). Tostrud was confirmed unanimously to the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota by the U.S. Senate in September 2018. He clerked for Judge Edward Devitt of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota from 1990 to 1992, and for Judge George MacKinnon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1992. Throughout his career he has maintained a complex litigation practice concentrated almost exclusively in the federal courts. His pro bono service included representing military veterans before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and assisting a Japanese American obtain benefits in 1991 arising from his family’s internment following the Pearl Harbor attack 50 years earlier. His lecture will begin at 4 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons.
Earlier this fall, as part of a special series of events in honor of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Buntrock Institute co-sponsored a public conversation between Brenda Berkman ’73 and Visiting Assistant Professor of History Patrick Wilz. One of New York City’s first female firefighters and a 9/11 first responder, Berkman arrived at the World Trade Center site just after the North Tower fell. She remained there throughout the day, witnessing the collapse of the 7 World Trade Center, and returned to the site each day for months to assist in recovery and remediation efforts amid the rubble.
In her conversation with Wilz, Berkman explored what it means to be swept into the current of history, and how one makes sense of it afterward. Drawing on her service on 9/11 and her printmaking practice in its aftermath, the conversation examined how we process, commemorate, and remember trauma — both personally and collectively. An exhibit of her lithographs, Thirty-Six Views of One World Trade Center, will be on display in the Groot Gallery in the Center for Art and Dance through November 1.