Join the Aspen Institute’s Religion & Society Program for two days of conversations exploring how religious tolerance, freedom of thought, and freedom of assembly have shaped America’s story.
Faith & the American Experiment: An Evening with Ken Burns and David Brooks
September 23 | 7:30 – 9:00 pm ET
Why were the founders—many fervently committed to a monotheistic faith—so strongly committed to religious toleration? What grounded their story? And how does the Declaration and Constitution’s vision of compromise and distributed power position us today to navigate plural visions of the good? Join the Aspen Institute’s Religion & Society Program for an evening with one of our most venerable historians and journalists.
Featuring
Ken Burns
Ken Burns is a multi-award-winning documentary director and producer whose films have shaped how generations of Americans understand their history for 50 years. His films earned 17 Emmy Awards, 2 Grammy Awards, and 2 Academy Award nominations. In 2008, Burns received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, and in 2022, he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In November 2025, PBS broadcast The American Revolution, a six-part, twelve-hour series on America’s founding struggle, which presents the story of the men and women of the Revolutionary generation, their humanity in victory and defeat, and the crisis that they lived through.
David Brooks
David Brooks is a staff writer for the Atlantic and the inaugural senior presidential fellow at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. He is a commentator on “The PBS Newshour” and founder and chair of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute. Brooks was previously a columnist at The New York Times for 22 years. Earlier, he was a foreign correspondent, op-ed editor and movie critic at The Wall Street Journal after beginning his career as a police reporter in Chicago. He has also taught at Duke and University of Chicago. The author of, most recently, “How To Know A Person,” Brooks’ previous books include the bestsellers “The Second Mountain,” “The Road to Character” and “The Social Animal.”
Religious Pluralism at America 250
September 24 | 9:00 – 5:00 pm ET
A daylong conference exploring religious toleration, freedom of thought, and freedom of assembly as foundational commitments in America’s origin story, including our religious life.
