Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Civil Discourse dinner & discussion reflecting on America’s Founders, 250 years later

This summer, Duke’s incoming first-year students were encouraged to read Never Caught, the story of Ona Judge, an enslaved woman whom George Washington spent years trying to recapture. This week, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Egan Fellow Rick Atkinson comes to Duke to discuss his trilogy on the American Revolution, in which he joins other historians in recognizing Washington as the single most “indispensable man” of the Revolution and founding.

So how should we, looking back on the founding generation 250 years later, engage with the Founders? Hypocritical slaveholders, 1-percenters, and bigots? Or pioneers of an unprecedented experiment in human freedom and self-government?

Yes—and yes.

Join us for a civil discourse discussion—and pizza—as we “break bread with the dead” and consider how we engage with, learn from, and reckon with the past.

Register: