History Department’s 2026 Janice D. and Theodore H. Fossieck Lecture

About this event

We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . all men are created equal . .. with certain inalienable rights . . . life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 250 years after they were written, these words remain at once familiar and startling. What do they mean to us today?

Do we understand them in the same way the Founders did? Historian and former presidential speechwriter Ted Widmer seeks to answer these questions by returning to where the nation’s story began, the Declaration of Independence, to trace the remarkable history of how it came to be and how it has shaped the democratic aspirations of Americans and others for more than two centuries.

Description from University at Albany.

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