Event details

A Broadway musical has spurred a burst of interest in the life and achievements of Alexander Hamilton, whose meteoric rise to the heights of American military, political, and professional distinction is of heroic dimension. To mark the publication of Cambridge’s new two-volume collection of Hamilton’s political writings, edited by Carson Holloway and Bradford P. Wilson, the Madison Program announces a Hamilton roundtable discussion with six Hamilton scholars, all focusing on different aspects of Hamilton’s origins, character, and legacy.

Carson Holloway is Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska, Omaha and Visiting Scholar in the Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. He is co-editor, with Bradford P. Wilson, of the two-volume work The Political Writings of Alexander Hamilton (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is also the author of Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration: Completing the Founding or Betraying the Founding? (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He has been a Visiting Fellow in Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and a Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought at the Heritage Foundation. His scholarly articles have appeared in the Review of Politics, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, and Perspectives on Political Science, and he has written more popular articles for First Things, National Affairs, Public Discourse, National Review, and The Federalist. Professor Holloway received his B.A. from the University of Northern Iowa and his Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University.

Stephen F. Knott is Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Prior to accepting his position at the War College, Professor Knott co-chaired the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. His writings include Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (Kansas University Press, 2002); Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (Oxford University Press, 1996); and Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance That Forged America (Sourcebooks, 2016)_. _He was designated a National Hamilton Scholar in January 2017 by the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society for his outstanding scholarship, research, and writing on Alexander Hamilton. Professor Knott received his B.A. from Assumption College and his Ph.D. from Boston College.

Andrew R. Porwancher, Spring 2018 James Madison Program Garwood Visiting Fellow, is the Wick Cary Associate Professor of Classics & Letters at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches constitutional history. While at Princeton, he is completing his book, The Jewish Founding Father: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden Life (under contract with Harvard University Press). His previous publications include The Devil Himself: A Tale of Honor, Insanity, and the Birth of Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2016) and John Henry Wigmore and the Rules of Evidence: The Hidden Origins of Modern Law (University of Missouri Press, 2016). He received fellowships from the University of Oxford, Yeshiva University, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Professor Porwancher received his B.A. from Northwestern University, his M.A. from Brown University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

Darren Staloff is Professor of History at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is also Director of the Hertog Scholars Program at the Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. He received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and was the James Madison Program’s 2006-2007 Garwood Family Visiting Fellow. His primary interest is early American intellectual and political history. He is the author of Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding (Macmillan, 2007) and The Making of an American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts (Oxford University Press, 1998). He has also designed and performed in several taped lecture series with Teaching Company on American History and the History of Philosophy. Professor Staloff received his B.A. from Columbia College and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Richard E. Sylla is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, where he was Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets. He is also Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Fellow of the Cliometric Society, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of American Finance, New York City. Professor Sylla’s research focus is on the financial history of the United States in comparative contexts, and he has written many articles, essays, and reviews in business, economic, and financial history. He is the author of Alexander Hamilton: The Illustrated Biography (Sterling, 2016) and The American Capital Market, 1846-1914 (Arno Press, 1975), and co-author of Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt (Columbia University Press, 2018), The Evolution of the American Economy (Macmillan, 1993), and A History of Interest Rates (Wiley Finance, 2005). Sylla is a former editor of The Journal of Economic History and served as president of the Economic History Association. He also served as president of the Business History Conference, the leading professional association of business historians, from which he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. Professor Sylla received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Bradford P. Wilson is Executive Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University. He also serves as President of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions. Dr. Wilson’s interests include American constitutional law, American political thought, and Western political thought. With Carson Holloway, he edited The Political Writings of Alexander Hamilton (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is the author of Enforcing the Fourth Amendment: A Jurisprudential History and co-editor of three books: American Political Parties & Constitutional Politics, Separation of Powers and Good Government, and The Supreme Court and American Constitutionalism. He was an editor of the journal Academic Questions and has been an editor of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy since 1982. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Moscow State University and Moscow's International Juridical Institute and served as Research Associate to two Chief Justices of the United States, Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist. He also served as Acting President and Executive Director of the National Association of Scholars. Dr. Wilson received his B.A. from North Carolina State University, his M.A. from Northern Illinois University, and his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America.