CANCELED: Marc Stears, Oxford University- "'Freedom is Everybody's Job': Conflict and Consensus in American Political Identity"
The guest speaker at this week's Research Colloquium, Marc Stears, from Oxford University, is grounded in Europe and is unable to participate in this seminar. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Oxford University
"'Freedom is Everybody's Job': Conflict and Consensus in American Political Identity"
Abstract: In October of 1947, the "Freedom Train" began its journey carrying a collection of the most politically valued historic documents across the length and breadth of the country. The Train's stated mission was to convince Americans that "freedom was everybody's job" and on first blush it appears that it was an astonishing success. Up to forty million people took part in Freedom Train events in 1947-8, participating in "Rededication Weeks" in thier towns and villages and reciting Freedom Pledges, Freedom Promises, and even Freedom Prayers in public. This paper examines what these events can tell us about American conceptions of freedom and American political identity. It begins by revealing how the Train's story conflicts with many orthodox understandings of that identity, especially those offered by Louis Hartz and Rogers Smith. It then demontsrates how the mission and the reception of the Train owed more to an alternative tradition about America and its liberties., a tradition that was shaped in the aftermath of war and depression by a host of otherwise very different thinkers, including John Dewey, Ralph Ellison, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Arthur Schlesinger. This tradition focused on ways on combining conflict and consensus in American life in a manner almost entirely forgotten in political and legal theory in the later twentieth century. The paper excavates this tradition and explores what it continues to offer to us today.
« Return to Research Seminars