HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Marshall University’s Amicus Curiae Lecture Series on Constitutional Democracy will celebrate U.S. Constitution and Citizenship Day with a lecture by award-winning author and historian Denver Brunsman.
The event, which is free and open to the public, is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 17, at the Brad D. Smith Foundation Hall.
Brunsman’s lecture, titled “Neither to Stretch, nor Relax: George Washington, Executive Power, and the Constitution,” will explore George Washington as a constitutional thinker and practitioner. As Brunsman points out, Washington not only played a vital role in the drafting of the constitution by serving as the president of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and as the country’s first president, he also defined how the executive would function. As president, he faced many difficult decisions concerning executive power and how it should be used.
“I am very excited about this lecture as issues related to executive power and how broad it should be are constantly part of our political discourse and subject to constitutional dispute,” said Patricia Proctor, director of the Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy, which sponsors the lecture series. “Dr. Brunsman can bring to life the perspective of our first president, who held strong views regarding the Constitution and how the executive should be defined. I look forward to hearing this issue discussed in historical context, to thinking about how the history impacts our world today, and considering what Washington has to teach us on the topic.”
Brunsman is chair of the History Department at George Washington University, where his courses include “George Washington and His World,” taught annually at the Mount Vernon estate. He is the author of the award-winning book, “The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World” (2013), and co-author of a leading college and Advanced Placement U.S. History textbook, “Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People” (2016, 2020) as well as the e-books “Leading Change: George Washington and Establishing the Presidency” (2017) and “George Washington and the Establishment of the Federal Government” (2020), among other publications. He has won awards for teaching excellence and has been inducted into the George Washington University Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He was also selected to the College Board Advanced Placement U.S. History Development Committee, where he served as higher education chair from 2021 to 2023.
The lecture series is sponsored by Marshall’s Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Drinko Academy in honor of U.S. Constitution and Citizenship Day. For more information, contact Proctor by e-mail at patricia.proctor@marshall.edu.