Liberty’s Legacy: Celebrating 250 Years of Independence
Keynote Speaker
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham is one of America’s most prominent public intellectuals. A highly sought-after commentator, Meacham regularly appears on MSNBC, CNN, and other news outlets. A skilled orator with a depth of knowledge about politics, religion, and current affairs, Meacham has the unique ability to bring history to life and offer historical context to current events and issues impacting our daily lives – whether we realize it or not – to audiences of all backgrounds and levels of understanding.
Meacham is the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers. In 2022, he published And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle, which won numerous awards, including the Lincoln Prize, and spent 16 weeks on the Times bestseller list. A #1 New York Times bestseller, Meacham’s The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels examines the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in U.S. history when hope overcame division and fear. Meacham’s His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope – an intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis—quickly gained bestseller status.
Meacham’s biography of George H. W. Bush, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. According to the Times, “Destiny and Power reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it.” A #1 New York Times bestseller, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power was hailed as “masterful and intimate” by Fortune magazine. Meacham’s other national bestsellers include Franklin and Winston, American Gospel, and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
He served as Newsweek’s managing editor from 1998 to 2006 and as editor from 2006 to 2010.
Named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University where he holds the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency. In 2024, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal and was honored as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.
His latest book, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology, provides an historical examination of American democracy through key speeches and documents from 1619 to present, analyzing national debates and divisions with expert commentary.
Symposium Speakers
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for then Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown: the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service. Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in over fifty cases—tops among living scholars under age 70. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show, The West Wing, and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Fox News, and Erin Burnett Outfront. He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books. The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021 and its sequel, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920 was published in September 2025. Amar also has a free weekly podcast, “Amarica’s Constitution.” Amar’s op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free courses may be found online.
Michael D. Hattem is a historian of the American Revolution and popular memory. He is the author of The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History (2024) and Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (2020). He has worked as a consultant on historical documentaries, including appearing in Discovery Networks’ “American Revolution.” His work has been featured and mentioned in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other mainstream media publications and outlets. He has also served as a historical consultant to multiple museums, curated historical exhibitions, authenticated and written catalogue essays for historical document auctions. He is currently the Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. Hattem received his PhD in history at Yale University.
James “Jake” Lundberg is archivist, in-house historian and staff writer at The Atlantic. His research covers the history of newspapers, media, and communications; antebellum, culture, and ideas; Moby-Dick and its moment; Lincoln and the Civil War; and photography in nineteenth-century America. Lundberg is former Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame, where he taught courses on US History from the Revolution to Reconstruction. In 2023, he was recognized with the Edmund P. Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Lundberg is the author of Horace Greeley: Print, Politic, and the Failure of American Nationhood (2019). His writing has appeared in Slate and the New York Times Disunion series. Lundberg received his PhD in History at Yale University.
Manisha Kumar Sinha, PhD. is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and 2024 President-elect and 2025 President of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (2000), named one of the ten best books on slavery by Politico and featured in the 1619 Project, and The Slaves Cause: A History of Abolition (2016), long listed for the National Book Award for Non Fiction and winner of the OAH Avery O. Craven Award, the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic Book Prize, the Frederick Douglas Book Prize, and the Southern Historical Association’s James A. Rawley Award. Her latest book is The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 (2024). Shinha is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2022. Her research interests lie in the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is the eighth recipient of the James W.C. Pennington Award for 2021 from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. In 2018, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris, Diderot. Shinha has written for CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The New York Daily News, and The Washington Post, among other newspapers and journals. She has been interviewed by national and internal media and has lectured all over the world. She received her PhD in History from Columbia University. Sinha served as the 2018 Watchorn Lincoln Dinner speaker. Her presentation was titled, “Lincoln and the Abolitionists.”
Ronald C. White, PhD. is one of today’s most astute biographers of Abraham Lincoln. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling presidential biographies: A. Lincoln: A Biography and American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S Grant. The winner of the 2023 Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement for his work on Lincoln, White is widely recognized as a public intellectual commenting on American history, politics and culture. He engages audiences about some of the nation’s prominent historical figures in relation to our present tumultuous politics. He has lectured at the White House, been interviewed on the PBS NewsHour and NPR, and, at the invitation of the Library of Congress, he has spoken to members of Congress on “Leadership Lessons from Lincoln and Grant.” He has written op-ed essays for The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. White has spoken at more than forty American colleges and universities, as well as Oxford University. He has lectured throughout the world, including England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand. White’s other books include, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words, Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President, and On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawerence Chamberlain. White received his PhD in Religion and History from Princeton University. White was the 2003 Watchorn Lincoln Dinner speaker. His presentation examined Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
Return to America250
—
The Watchorn Lincoln Memorial Association (WLMA) supports the mission of the Lincoln Memorial Shrine. Founded in 1938 by Robert Watchorn as a 501(c)(3) non-profit California corporation, the WLMA helps advance the educational work of the Lincoln Memorial Shrine. The organization sponsors numerous programs throughout the year, including the Watchorn Lincoln Dinner. The dinner, hosted in coordination with the Special Collections Division of A.K. Smiley Public Library, is held annually on Lincoln’s birthday. Since the first dinner in 1932, more than ninety historians, authors and enthusiasts have addressed Watchorn Lincoln Dinner guests.
