Second Essay (and Simulation!) 2026

On October 7, the class will simulate the National Security Council (plus other advisers) and advise the president on how to address artificial intelligence. The scenario is from the Council on Foreign Relations:  https://www.cfr.org/education/teach/simulations/regulating-ai. The president will consider three broad options: an international governing regime, federal regulation, or limited federal involvement.

By Wednesday, I will randomly assign each of you a role from the list below. Most roles come from CFR's NSC list, along with several other custom roles.  If there are specific roles you do not want, please email me by tomorrow morning.

During the simulation, take notes by hand (unless you have an accommodation for electronic note-taking). Record which arguments moved people, and what the president decided and why.  Your paper should explain how well our simulation captured the way the United States actually makes policy, and what the gap between the two reveals about executive power. Discuss:

• How the interests and demands of your real-world role would affect what its occupant recommends about AI policy;
• What you argued and why; 
• The exchanges or arguments that shaped the outcome;
• The president's decision;
• How the simulation both resembled and differed from real-world decision-making.  Compare the simulation with actual policymaking. In reality, AI policy involves Congress, state legislatures, courts, industry, and foreign governments. What did the simulation get right, and what did it leave out? Draw both on class readings and outside sources. 

Instructions:

• Essays should be double-spaced and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page.
• This week's reflection should be a preliminary description of your role and what someone in that position might advise. Do not rely only on the CFR description.
• Essays should be in the form of Word documents. Do not submit pdfs or Google docs.
• Cite outside sources with endnotes (not footnotes) in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Provide a photo, screenshot, or scan of at least one page of your notes. You may either upload it to Canvas or email it to me.
• Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism. It could result in a referral to the Academic Standards Committee. You do not want to start your college career this way.
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Read Strunk & White and watch my writing lecture before writing this paper.
• Turn in essays to Canvas by 11:59 PM, Friday, October 16. (If you have trouble with Canvas, simply email it to me as an attached Word file.) I reserve the right to dock essays a grade point for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

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The Roles:

• President
• Vice President 
• Secretary of Defense
• Secretary of State
• Secretary of Energy
• Secretary of Commerce
• Secretary of Labor
• Attorney General
• Secretary of Homeland Security
• Chair, Federal Trade Commission
• Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (aka the National Security Advisor)
• U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
• Chief of Staff
• Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Director of National Intelligence
• CIA Director
• FBI Director
• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Constltution I

 

Next assignment:  reversing the order of the following two weeks, with the executive branch first.

To change endnotes from lower-case Romans to Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) in Microsoft Word, open the References tab, click the small arrow (dialog box launcher) in the corner of the Footnotes group, set "Number format" to 1, 2, 3... in the dropdown menu, and click Apply. This converts existing Roman numerals or letters to Arabic numbers throughout the document. 

This video shows you how to change the number format of your endnotes:

https://youtu.be/gWWyU3ovjZQ?

For Wednesday:

• Wurman, ch. 4-5
• Amar, "Founding Myths" -- in CANVAS
• Federalist 39, 49, 51.

What did you think of  model constitutional provisions?*

"Constitutionalism"

• Political constraints within the document (more on Wed.)
• Norms

The Constitution

Which of the following does the Constitution explicitly mention?

1. The Speaker of the House
2. The right to a jury of one's peers
3. Privilege from arrest for members of Congress
4. Presumption of innocence
5. Post offices
6. The right to travel
7. Capital punishment
8. Marriage
9. Bribery
10. Qualifications of federal judges

Properties

• Fed 1: "government from reflection and choice [not] accident and force."
• "Writtenness"(Wurman 26)
• Minimalism (compare with other countries)
• Rigidity
• Decision rules (process, not outcome): contrast with California
• Institutional Competition
• Federalism
• Bicameralism
• Separation of Powers

Ron Chernow's biography undercut the old notion that Alexander Hamilton was a well-born defender of privilege. Here is the passage that inspired the musical:

Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died, their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, 16, and Alexander, 14, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless. At every step in their rootless, topsy-turvy existence, they had been surrounded by failed, broken, embittered people. Their short lives had been shadowed by a stupefying sequence of bankruptcies, marital separations, deaths, scandals, and disinheritance. Such repeated shocks must have stripped Alexander Hamilton of any sense that life was fair, that he existed in a benign universe, or that he could ever count on help from anyone. That this abominable childhood produced such a strong, productive, self-reliant human being -- that this fatherless adolescent could have ended up a founding father of a country he had not yet even seen -- seems little short of miraculous

Threat One: Federalist 1:

[A]dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

A more contemporary version of the idea.

Threats: Insurrection, Invasion, and Military Control

• Federalist 8
• Federalist 9

Threat Four: Faction

• Federalist 10

* The source of the model

Political Culture in the US

Questions on the assignment?

For next time, read:

• The Constitution
• Wurman, ch. 1-3
• Federalist 1,8,9,10.

Tocqueville

Pew Research reported on religion in the states.  See, esp., the contrast between Texas and California.

Civil Religion, which Robert Bellah defined as "a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity."

So does religious activism violate the separation of church and state?

"I have observed with profound sorrow the role that many religious leaders have played in urging passage of this bill, because I cannot make their activities jibe with my concept of the proper place of religious leaders in our national life … This is the second time in my lifetime an effort has been made by the clergy to make a moral question of a political issue. The other was prohibition.  We know something of the results of that." source

In 2008, why did Obama believe it was necessary to talk about religious faith?

BHO on religion:

But what I am suggesting is this — secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history — were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

A famous prophecy: Tocqueville concludes volume I (p. 413) by comparing the United States and Russia: "Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world."

What Tocqueville did not foresee:  immigration from Asia, southern and central Europe, and the Americas.

From Tocqueville, pp 291-292:

In Europe almost all the disorders of society are born around the domestic hearth and not far from the nuptial bed. It is there that men come to feel scorn for natural ties and legitimate pleasures and develop a taste for disorder, restlessness of spirit, and instability of desires. Shaken by the tumultuous passions which have often troubled his own house, the European finds it hard to submit to the authority of the state's legislators. When the American returns from the turmoil of politics to the bosom of the family, he immediately finds a perfect picture of order and peace. There all his pleasures are simple and natural and his joys innocent and quiet, and as the regularity of life brings him happiness, he easily forms the habit of regulating his opinions as well as his tastes.

Whereas the European tries to escape his sorrows at home by troubling society, the American derives from his home that love of order which he carries over affairs of state.

From page 603 (not on this week's list): "If anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women"

Individualism

• US v. Europe
• Seeing the government as a threat and risk to safety
• Americans view their industriousness  -- an ad!

Patriotism

• "Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the American" (p. 237).
• Comparative data

• Putin on American exceptionalism
• Trump on American exceptionalism

Service

• Tocqueville on American democracy: "Under its sway it is not especially the things accomplished by he public administration that are great, but rather those things done without its help and beyond its sphere" (p. 244)
• Where people give: 23% goes to religion

• Where people volunteer: 33% religious

Conformity:

The Majority: "I know no country, in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America (Tocqueville, 254-255).

In 1829, Madison elaborated on his earlier fears about the majority: " In Monarchies the interests and happiness of all may be sacrificed to the caprice and passion of a despot: In Aristocracies, the rights and welfare of the many may be sacrificed to the pride and cupidity of a few: In Republics, the great danger is that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the Minority."

Tocqueville on how slavery degrades slave0wners (347):

The white man on the right bank, forced to live by his own endeavors, has made material well being the main object of his existence; as he lives in a country offering inexhaustible resources to his industry and continual inducements to activity, his eagerness to possess things goes beyond the ordinary limits of human cupidity; tormented by a longing for wealth, he boldly follows every path to fortune that is open to him; he is equally prepared to turn into a sailor, pioneer, artisan, or cultivator; there is something wonderful in his resourcefulness and a sort of heroism in his greed for gain.

The American on the left bank scorns not only work itself but also enterprises in which work is necessary to success; living in idle ease, he has the tastes of idle men; money has lost some of its value in his eyes; he is less interested in wealth than in excitement and pleasure and expends in that direction the energy which his neighbor puts to other use; he is passionately fond of hunting and war; he enjoys all the most strenuous forms of bodily exercise; he is accustomed to the use of weapons and from childhood has been ready to risk his life in single combat.

In 1829, slaveholder Madison on African Americans: "If they had the complexion of the Serfs in the North of Europe, or of the villeins formerly in England in other terms, if they were of our own complexion, much of the difficulty would be removed. But the mere circumstance of complexion can not deprive them of the character of men."  (See the remarkable story of Paul Jennings.)

Pages 364-407: "what causes might lead to the dismemberment of the present confederation."

Lincoln Second Inaugural

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

"Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Tocqueville and Political Culture

  

• College Reps and Dems
• Wednesday: Tocqueville 340-363, 525-530; Lincoln Second Inaugural Address; Obama speech.
• Questions on assignment?  Purpose of this assignment and writing assignments in general.  "Paramedic Method"
• If you have any problems submitting your paper via Canvas, simply email it to me as an attached Word file. (not a Google doc or pdf).
• Citing articles.  Do not say that the author of an op-ed or journal article is the publication in which it appears.  Sometimes stories come from wire services.

Anticipating the Constitution: “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury." (Allen, p. 246).

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

Allen closes with a discussion of equality.

Tocqueville

An op-ed -- Bill Clinton using in 2020!

Origins of the fake quotation  

The very first line of Tocqueville's introduction: “No novelty in the United States struck me more vividly during my stay there than equality of conditions" (p. 9)

• What did that phrase mean to Tocqueville? 
• He was not blind to slavery -- discussion on Wed.

Maintaining a democratic republic

• Circumstances – physical isolation (remember this aspect when we discuss presidency)
• Laws – starting next week
• Mores (moeurs)–what are mores? (p. 287)

Religion

"The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States." (p. 295 of Lawrence-Mayer ed.) 

• Wealth, religion, and the US as an outlier:  2018 graph and more recent graph
• Belief in the Bible and support for influence
• Creationism 
• By state

• An international comparison  (remember when we discuss Edwards v. Aguillard)

 Civil Religion

• Winthrop's "City on a Hill" (Matt 5:14) 
• The Liberty Bell: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" (Leviticus 25:10)
• The national motto, "In God We Trust"
• The Dollar Bill:  pyramid and eagle

• The Pledge of Allegiance (see old method of salute)
• 1777 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Lady Gaga sings the National Anthem two weeks after the January 6 insurrection.  Note that she turns and points to the Capitol flag as she sings "...our flag was still there."

Grievances

Any questions on the assignment?

Posting weekly reflection on Canvas instead of email: If we had had 15 more minutes in today's class, what could you have added to the discussion?  That is, identify a relevant observation you could have made (or a question you could have posed) about today's material that did not come up during class time.  (Same specs: 250 words maximum.)

Dr. Harkonen will visit to talk about the DC Program.  I have an internship listserv.  When you are on the market, let me know and I will add your name.

FOR NEXT MONDAY:

• Finish Allen
• Tocqueville, 9-20, 231-261, 277-315
• Nicholas Steinman will talk about College Dems.

The Bill of Particulars and the Bill of Rights (ignore the commentary at the top and bottom of the page)

Allen, ch. 18: The Bill of Particulars and the Bible (with a Seder cameo at 3:50)  (And a 2019 news story...)

Calhoun articulates an argument against the Declaration 

Text of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. 

Lincoln's comments at Galesburg

I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject he used the strong language that “he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just;” and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson.

Lincoln-Douglas Galesburg debate video at 1:08-- What crucial word did the re-enactor screw up?  

From the Cornerstone Speech by Alexander Stephens (Allen, p. 241):

The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Secession documents

Melia Wong's amazing senior thesis on Union and Confederate songs.

What was Frederick Douglass's take?

• Biblical reference  -- "the rivers of Babylon"
• You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. [Douglass was way ahead of his time in accepting Chinese immigration.]
• Douglass was also one of the few men at Seneca Falls.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Tiananmen Declaration

The Declaration, Continued

 

From the 1972 movie 1776. South Carolina'sEdward Rutledge (John Cullum) challenges Northern delegates, esp. John Adams, who wanted to condemn slavery in the Declaration of Independence.  The lyrics trace the Triangular Trade: New England ships carried Bibles and rum to Africa, traded them for enslaved people, transported them to the West Indies and the South, and brought back molasses to make more rum.

Dr. Harkonen will visit toward the end of class on Wednesday.

Questions on assignment?  

READ FOR WEDNESDAY:

• Allen, ch. 44-45
• Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" July 5, 1852. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/ .
• Alexander Stephens, "The Cornerstone Speech," March 21, 1861, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/

Review from last time

Spinoza -- TJ himself was a Deist. Locke: "The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life,health, liberty or possessions."

•  Allen's Dad weighs in on King’s concept of natural law
•  Compare and contrast to Jefferson? – Editors added more God -- why?

...................

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

Self-evident? Allen 161.

Hamilton on self-evident truths (Federalist 31):

DISQUISITIONS of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind. Where it produces not this effect, it must proceed either from some defect or disorder in the organs of perception, or from the influence of some strong interest, or passion, or prejudice. Of this nature are the maxims in geometry, that "the whole is greater than its part; things equal to the same are equal to one another; two straight lines cannot enclose a space; and all right angles are equal to each other.'' Of the same nature are these other maxims in ethics and politics, that there cannot be an effect without a cause; that the means ought to be proportioned to the end; that every power ought to be commensurate with its object; that there ought to be no limitation of a power destined to effect a purpose which is itself incapable of limitation...

 Lincoln trained his mind by studying Euclid.  In  this letter, he applied what he had learned to the Declaration:

One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

The Lincoln movie paraphrased it.

 Did Jefferson mean “men” as gender?

Deleted Paragraph (see, esp. p. 154 of Allen)

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidels powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold...

The Five Facets of Equality (108-109; 268-269):

• The first facet, as we are about to see, describes the kind of equality that exists when neither of two parties can dominate the other. 
• The second facet concerns the importance to humankind of having equal access to the tool of government, the most important instrument each of us has for securing the future. 
• The third facet concerns the value of egalitarian approaches to the development of collective intelligence ("potlucks")
• The fourth facet concerns egalitarian practices of reciprocity. How well do citizens do at thinking of themselves as receiving benefactions from their fellow citizens and owing them benefits in return? 
• And the fifth facet has to do with the equality entailed in sharing ownership of public life and in co-creating our common world.  

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ...

In this news with CMC connections:  a post by Jonah Goldberg (P `25) with comment by Sen. Ted Cruz (husband of Heidi Nelson Cruz `94)

What is a right?

• Natural or human rights
• Civil rights
• Political rights

What is problematic about "Nature's God" and "Creator"?

 Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness COMMA!!!

• Why that order?  (Why the comma?)
• What is liberty? Tyranny of majority?
• Why not property?
• What is happiness?

From The Ethics:

Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness. The true student of politics, too, is thought to have studied virtue above all things; for he wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws.

Why not the word democracy?

Securing rights

• That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
• But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 [NATIONAL TREASURE]

•  “evinces a design” (196-197) -- a plan-- CONSPIRACY THEORY!

First Essay 2026

Pick one:

1 Find someone outside this class (no names, please). Without priming, ask that person to finish this sentence aloud: "All men are created equal, but..." or "...and..." Record the exact words. Ask that person to explain.  Next, find a primary or contemporary source (e.g., newspaper article, a court opinion, a speech) in which someone argued, after 1852, that equality is unconditional ("and") or that it comes with a condition ("but").  Now compare and contrast your interview subject's instinct, your source's argument, and Douglass's and Coolidge's treatment of the same clause (The Coolidge epigraph on the syllabus links to his speech on the Declaration). 

2  The Declaration presents itself as the act of a collective “we,” even though many people in America had no part in drafting it. Drawing on Allen’s discussion of democratic writing, analyze the relationship among equality, participation, and political authorship. Begin with a particular decision made by a group to which you belong: a team, club, workplace, congregation, student organization, or other community. Explain exactly who could speak, who made the final decision, and whose views carried the most weight. Then answer: Can a decision genuinely express the will of an equal community when not everyone participates equally in making it? Use specific language from the Declaration and Allen to evaluate the decision. Consider the strongest defense of the decision-making process as well as the strongest objection to it. Conclude by explaining what this case reveals (or does not reveal) about the Declaration’s implicit claim to speak for “one people.”

3. The Declaration builds its case for independence through grievances against King George III. Choose three grievances that share a common principle of legitimate government. Include at least one from the second half of the list. Explain why the authors chose each grievance and how its wording strengthens the case for independence. Then, analyze a grievance you or a group you know raised against a government, school, employer, or other institution. Draw on your own observations, or interview someone who took part. Name the act that prompted the complaint, the remedy the group sought, the institution's response, and one disagreement within the group. Attach a one-sentence appendix naming when and how you gathered this information — a conversation, a meeting, a document. I shall not grade the appendix; I shall only confirm it exists. Compare the modern case with the Declaration. Name one similarity that makes the comparison useful and one difference that could mislead. Answer this passage from Allen, Our Declaration, p. ___: "[insert quotation]." Explain how the modern institution might answer the complaint, and state that answer fairly.

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A strong essay will make a contestable argument, analyze the precise language of the relevant texts, incorporate material from our class discussions, and acknowledge alternative views and the limits of its evidence. I strongly encourage relevant outside research, particularly when it provides historical context, evidence about an example, or support for a claim about how typical an experience is. Cite all outside sources.  For privacy reasons, do not provide the full name or identifying information of any individual to whom you speak for this assignment.

Instructions:

• Essays should be double-spaced and no more than three pages long. I will not read past the third page.
• Essays should be in the form of Word documents. Do not submit pdfs or Google docs.
• Cite outside sources with endnotes (not footnotes) in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism. It could result in a referral to the Academic Standards Committee. You do not want to start your college career this way.
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.  Read Strunk & White and watch my writing lecture before writing this paper.
• Turn in essays to Canvas by 11:59 PM, Friday, September 25. (If you have trouble with Canvas, simply email it to me as an attached Word file.) I reserve the right to dock essays a grade point for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.