Constitution Day -

On Friday, September 20, 2024, the American Founding Group and the School of Public and International Affairs will host a celebration of Constitution Day. The centerpiece of these festivities is a lecture by Eric Nelson, Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University, entitled “Of Kings and Presidents: Monarchy and the Framing of the Constitution.”

Prior to the lecture, the UGA Libraries will host “Constitution on the Quad,” featuring Constitutional trivia and student readings of the Constitution. In addition, historical documents and materials related to the American founding and U.S. Constitution will be displayed at the Chapel from the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Thank you to the Jack Miller Center for their generous support of Constitution Day.

The content and opinions expressed during events hosted by the School of Public & International events do not necessarily reflect the views of nor are they endorsed by the University of Georgia or the University System of Georgia.

Constitution Day Itinerary
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1:30 pm

North Campus Quad

Constitution on the Quad: Constitutional trivia and student readings of the Constitution

1:30 pm

UGA Chapel

Display of historical documents and materials related to the American founding and U.S. Constitution provided by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library

2:00 pm

UGA Chapel

Keynote Lecture by Eric Nelson, Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University.

What is Constitution Day?
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Constitution Day is the annual celebration of the day that representatives to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia completed and signed the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The observance of this day began as “I am an American Day” in 1940 and later as Citizenship Day in 1952 when the celebration was moved to September 17 to commemorate the signing of the original document. Constitution Day as we observe it today was recognized as a federal holiday in 2004, when Senator Robert Byrd passed a bill designating September 17 as the day for citizens to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution and to thoughtfully engage with the nation’s founding document.

About the Speaker
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Eric Nelson is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University. His research focuses on the history of political thought in early-modern Europe and America, and on the implications of that history for debates in contemporary political theory.

Particular interests include the history of republican political theory, the relationship between the history of political thought and the history of scholarship, theories of property, and the phenomenon of secularization.

Nelson is the author, most recently, of The Theology of Liberalism: Political Philosophy and the Justice of God (Harvard/Belknap, 2019). His other books include The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Harvard/Belknap, 2014), which received the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize and was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2015, as well as a Choice “Top 25 Books for 2015” selection; The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Harvard/Belknap, 2010), which received the Erwin Stein Prize and the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies and was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2010; and The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He also edited Hobbes’s translations of the Iliad and Odyssey for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes (The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2008). His essays have appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals and edited volumes. Nelson received his AB summa cum laude from Harvard University (1999) and his PhD from The University of Cambridge (2002). He has been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He has also been a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a British Marshall Scholar.