Salvatori Center Hosts Speakers
for Presidents Day Talks, Feb. 18

The Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World will host two talks on Monday, Feb. 18 in honor of President's Day, the first featuring Miami University professor Ryan Barilleaux's lunch address at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, and the second an afternoon presentation by Matthew Spalding '86 at Davidson Lecture Hall, located in Adams Hall. Both lectures are free and open to the public. The 11:30 a.m. lunch with Barilleaux is restricted to CMC students, faculty, and staff only, but the presentation thereafter, from noon to 1 p.m., is open to everyone.
Barilleaux, chair of the department of political science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, will discuss War, Peace, and George Washington's Presidency, examining how, through his conduct of office, Washington revealed the fundamental nature of executive power and constitutional responsibility, and set key precedents for his successors. He also demonstrated the political virtue of prudence in his conduct of the presidency, Barilleaux asserts, and that virtue is the key to understanding and appreciating his contribution to the success of the American Republic.
Barilleaux is the author or editor of seven books on the presidency and American politics, including The President as World Leader (1991), The Post-Modern Presidency: The Office after Ronald Reagan (1988), Presidential Frontiers: Unexplained Issues in White House Politics (1998), and Power and Prudence: The Presidency of George H.W. Bush (2004).
Spalding, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, will discuss George Washington and the Foundations of Liberty, exploring how Washington teaches us about America's beginnings and about the nature of politics. As the least educated and the least philosophical of the American Founders, Spalding notes, Washington never wrote a tract or treatise, and left no major account of his understanding of the ideas and events of the timeyet he personified more than anyone else the core principles of the Founding, reflected in his understanding of such concepts as religious liberty and self-governing citizenship.
Spalding says Washington also uniquely possessed the practical skills and political wisdom necessary to see those principles actualized in a regime of liberty.
Spalding is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College and has a Ph.D. in government from The Claremont Graduate School, where his work concentrated on government, political philosophy and early American political thought.
His lecture in Davidson Hall will be held from 4:15 to 5:45 p.m.
Reservations are not required to attend either of Monday's presentations.