Andrew Porwancher to Deliver Constitution Day Address at Great Hearts

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States on September 17, 1787, a 1940 portrait by Howard Chandler Christy depicting the signing of the Constitution in Philadelphia

Constitution Day commemorates the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution by thirty-nine brave men on September 17, 1787. The Great Hearts Institute has invited Andrew Porwancher from Arizona State University (ASU) to deliver our inaugural Constitution Day Address, titled “The Constitution: Hidden Truths and Enduring Myths,” on September 18 at 5:30 p.m.* in the Lund Center at Veritas Preparatory Academy. This free event is open to the public and is generously supported by the Jack Miller Center. *Please note that while September 17 is the officially recognized Constitution Day, the address at Great Hearts will take place the following day on the 18th.

“We invited Professor Porwancher to deliver the address to help us more fully understand how the historical record of the framers’ debates about the Constitution’s provisions continues to inform and shape our own debates about the way of life the Constitution created for us in the United States today,” shared Carol McNamara, Director of the Great Hearts Institute.

“I’m excited to deliver the [address] because Great Hearts is a community that is passionate about the values that have animated our Constitution for more than two centuries,” explained Porwancher. “I’ve been privileged to work with so many Great Hearts alumni and teachers at ASU who share my enthusiasm for the American founding.”

Porwancher stressed the importance of events like the Great Hearts Constitution Day Address. “They remind us that our eighteenth-century founding is not some remote event preserved in amber. The Constitution that the delegates drafted in the summer of 1787 continues to govern our lives and liberty today. Perhaps in no other sphere of American life does history confront us with such urgency,” he said.

“I hope attendees will walk away from my talk with a sense that a faithful reckoning with the historical record reveals that many of our common assumptions about the Constitution are actually myths that obscure a much more complex—and compelling—history,” added Porwancher.

Porwancher is a professor at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) at Arizona State University (ASU). A native of Princeton, New Jersey, he earned degrees from Brown and Northwestern before completing his PhD in history at Cambridge. He spent twelve years on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma before joining ASU. At SCETL, he also serves as Director of Graduate Studies. Porwancher is the author of The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton (Princeton University Press, 2021), which won the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award (Silver Medal in Biography). He recently discussed this work at a workshop during the 2024 National Symposium for Classical Education, also hosted by the Great Hearts Institute.

Porwancher previously served as the May Fellow at Harvard, the Horne Fellow at Oxford, and the Garwood Fellow at Princeton. In 2017, he won the Longmire Prize for innovative teaching. He is currently working on his fifth book, Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews (Princeton University Press). His other books include The Devil Himself (Oxford University Press, 2016), which was adapted for the stage in Dublin. Porwancher’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Join him and the Great Hearts community on September 18 at 5:30 p.m. in the Lund Center at Veritas Preparatory Academy for the inaugural Great Hearts Constitution Day Address.

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