2008 Woodie Awards
SDSU hosts lecture series
Harvard professor to deliver first lecture in series
Issue date: 10/4/05 Section: Campus
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian jack Rakove, of Standford University, will kick off a series of lectures at SDSU on the subject of American political ideas with a lecture titled "What Did the Constitution Originally Mean?"
Rakove will speak in the Volstorff Ballroom in the University Student Union Thursday, Oct. 6 at 7:30 p.m. The lecture series is in correlation with the Remnant Trust's loan of 50 classic political documents, which are on display and open for viewing in the archive of Briggs Library.
The Remnant Trust is a public educational foundation that shares a collection of original and first edition works on political philosophy. The documents on loan to SDSU will be at the Briggs Library until the end of November.
Rakove is a W.R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. He earned a doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1975. His writings focus on the revolutionary origins of American constitutionalism, the political thought and career of James Madison, and the role of history in constitutional interpretation and politics.
Rakove won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History for his book "Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution". The book dissects the original intent of the Founding Fathers and the degree to which those intentions can be certain today. The book also analyzes how far lawyers and judges can go in determinig those original intentions and applying them to current court cases.
"Having Professor Rakove come to Brookings is a wonderful opportunity for our students, faculty and the general public," said Robert Burns, SDSU professor of political science. "With two Supreme Court positions currently open and many contentious issues facing the justices, having the insights and knowledge of such a wide-ranging expert on the meaning of the Constitution provides a rare opportunity for us."
Rakove will speak in the Volstorff Ballroom in the University Student Union Thursday, Oct. 6 at 7:30 p.m. The lecture series is in correlation with the Remnant Trust's loan of 50 classic political documents, which are on display and open for viewing in the archive of Briggs Library.
The Remnant Trust is a public educational foundation that shares a collection of original and first edition works on political philosophy. The documents on loan to SDSU will be at the Briggs Library until the end of November.
Rakove is a W.R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. He earned a doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1975. His writings focus on the revolutionary origins of American constitutionalism, the political thought and career of James Madison, and the role of history in constitutional interpretation and politics.
Rakove won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History for his book "Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution". The book dissects the original intent of the Founding Fathers and the degree to which those intentions can be certain today. The book also analyzes how far lawyers and judges can go in determinig those original intentions and applying them to current court cases.
"Having Professor Rakove come to Brookings is a wonderful opportunity for our students, faculty and the general public," said Robert Burns, SDSU professor of political science. "With two Supreme Court positions currently open and many contentious issues facing the justices, having the insights and knowledge of such a wide-ranging expert on the meaning of the Constitution provides a rare opportunity for us."