Visions of the Founding Fathers: Reactions to 21st Century America

Aspen, CO. March 2, 2004 The Aspen Institute is pleased to announce a special community event, Visions of the Founding Fathers: Reactions to 21st Century America, to take place at 5:30 PM on March 17, 2004 in the Paepcke Building on the Institutes Aspen Meadows campus. Two of todays foremost scholars of the American RevolutionJoseph Ellis and Gordon S. Woodare the featured discussants in a program that will examine the vision of the founding fathers and how they might look at the Republic today. Moderating the dialogue will be Keith Berwick, Executive Vice President of Aspen Institute Seminars.

Joseph Ellis and Gordon Wood have written several of the most authoritative works on American colonial history and have both received Pulitzer Prizes as authors on the period. I think many of us want to hear what George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson would have to say about our country today, noted Kitty Boone, program director with the Aspen Institute. She added: And these gentlemen are the most qualified historians in our country to share the Founding Fathers perspectives with us.

Joseph Ellis is professor of history at Mount Holyoke College and National Book Award winning author of the best-selling American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. Dr. Ellis received the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.

Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. His book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. It is considered among the definitive works on the social, political and economic consequences of the Revolutionary War.

The March 17th event is free and open to the public. For more information, please call Cristal Logan at the Aspen Institute at 970-544-7929, or email her at cristal.logan@aspeninstitute.org.

The Aspen Institute is an international non-profit organization founded in 1950. Its mission is to foster enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues. Through seminars, policy programs, conferences and leadership development initiatives, the Institute and its international partners seek to promote the pursuit of common ground and deeper understanding in a nonpartisan and non-ideological setting. The Institute is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Its international network includes partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Lyon, Tokyo, and New Delhi, and leadership programs in Africa.

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