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Diverse perspectives on government, law, and politics are highlighted in a new speaker series, Law and Democracy: The United States at 250, which launched this fall.

The series is co-sponsored by Dartmouth Dialogues—an initiative dedicated to facilitating conversations and skills that bridge political and personal divides—and ties into the celebration next year of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Scheduled speakers include former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Other speakers include Nate Fick ’99, a former ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy; Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland; National Constitution Center CEO Jeff Rosen; Sarah Isgur and David French of Advisory Opinions, The Dispatch, and The New York Times; NYU law professor Maggie Blackhawk; and other legal scholars and columnists.

The series started in late September and included an Oct. 21 talk by Kathleen Kingsbury, the opinion editor of The New York Times, and a Nov. 6 discussion with Tom Wolf ’71, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania.

The goal of the series—which is also sponsored by the and the —is to provide opportunities for students and the community to engage with fundamental questions about policy, law, and governance, and to give students the opportunity to interact with a range of policymakers and experts.

“The first thing we want to do is show what it looks like to think rigorously about law and democracy as opposed to just telling people what to think,” says , senior associate director and senior policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center.

“Some key questions are: What are the right tools—interpretive, historical, empirical, normative—to engage these big questions about law, democracy, and policy? How do we rigorously study, celebrate, and interrogate the Declaration and the Constitution at this anniversary and at this political moment?” Nachlis adds.

The Rocky series follows on the heels of its successful 2024 Election Course and Speaker Series last fall, also with Dartmouth Dialogues, that brought former Republican Vice President Mike Pence, Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, and legal scholar Anita Hill, among other notable figures, to Dartmouth.

Offering the Dartmouth community a range of ideas, rather than the echo chambers fueled by social media, is crucial, Nachlis says.

“We want to include a broad swath of expertise and understanding to our conversations, knowing that it benefits everyone to hear differing ideas and perspectives, so students can take that information and form their own opinions, leaving these programs feeling stronger in their prior convictions, changed by something they heard, or having their curiosity piqued in a way inspires them to want to learn and understand more,” says , associate director for public programs and special events at the Rockefeller Center.

Nachlis notes that last year, some students at first thought they would not be comfortable meeting with or listening to Pence because of their “profound disagreements” with some of his policies. But every such student, on their own, ultimately decided to come and take part anyway, and Pence wound up talking to a capacity crowd about the importance of conservative values and civility in politics.

“It’s not like meeting with Vice President Pence last year suddenly changed our liberal students’ minds, nor should it, and that’s not the goal,” Nachlis says. “What they said it did, though, was it showed them that somebody that they had previously not taken seriously and demonized had a set of serious ideas that he believed in deeply and put into practice in his politics.”

Nachlis notes that two students, one a prominent Democrat on campus, the other a prominent Republican, decided to go together to buy Pence a Dartmouth hoodie.

“Efforts like this program show that Dartmouth is a very special place and that we have the expertise, the resources, and the willingness to champion things like this series,” Nachlis says. “It’s really an all-of-Dartmouth effort to do things like this.”

In addition to Kingsbury and Wolf, other speakers who have already visited in the Law and Democracy series have been former federal appeals court judge and Dan Goor, the executive producer of Brooklyn99 and Parks and Recreation.

Information about registration, video streams of the events, and full biographies of the speakers are available. The lineup is subject to change:

. Fick, who served as the first ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, is a former technology executive and entrepreneur and a Marine Corps officer with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of the book One Bullet Away.

. Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, is an eye surgeon by profession and chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. A proponent of limited government, he is the author of six books, including The Case Against Socialism.

Jan. 14, 5:30 p.m., Filene Auditorium. Smith is an author and historian whose books include biographies of Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, Herbert Hoover, and Thomas Dewey.

. Hogan was governor of Maryland from 2015 to 2023 and served as chair of the National Governors Association. He was only the second Republican elected governor in Maryland in 50 years.

and

. French is an opinion writer for The New York Times, and Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch, where the two of them host Advisory Opinions, a Dispatch podcast.

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. The media panel features Bennet, Lexington columnist at The Economist, former editorial page editor of The New York Times, and former editor-in-chief of The Atlantic; Greenhouse, editor at The New York Review of Books; Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark; and Weinberger, senior producer for @nytopinion audio for The New York Times.

. The Secretary of Transportation during the Biden Administration, Buttigieg ran for president in 2020, finished first in the Democratic Iowa caucuses, and a narrow second in the New Hampshire primary. While mayor of South Bend, Ind., he did a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2014 as a Navy Intelligence Officer. 

April 21, 5 p.m., Filene Auditorium. Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the founder and editor of National Affairs.

and

April 27, time and location TBD. Rocah is a former federal prosecutor and district attorney of Westchester County, N.Y., a frequent legal commentator, and adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law. Vance is the Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law and a legal analyst for MSNOW. She served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017.

and

April 28, 5 p.m., location TBD. Lee and Macedo are co-authors of In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us. Lee is a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton.

May 7, 5 p.m., location TBD. Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts a weekly podcast. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.

May 8, 5 p.m., location TBD. Blackhawk (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is professor of law at New York University and a prize-winning scholar and teacher of federal Indian law, constitutional law, and legislation.

May 12, 5 p.m., location TBD. Santos is the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and hosts The Happiness Lab podcast.

and

May 20, 5 p.m., location TBD. Bauer is professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at the New York University School of Law and served as White House counsel to President Obama from 2009 to 2011. Goldsmith is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University, served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, from 2003 to 2004, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

May 28, 5 p.m., location TBD. Gilbert is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard and author of the book Stumbling on Happiness.