Examine the Presidency Through the Lens of Leadership and Legacy
Join award-winning historians, Drs. Beverly Gage and Sean Wilentz, and former Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan to learn about presidential leadership.
This conversation will celebrate the publication of In Pursuit, an essay project featuring the presidents and first ladies, edited by Dr. Shogan. Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky will moderate the conversation, which will include George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, William Clinton, and more.
Meet the Presenters
Beverly Gage
Beverly Gage is the John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History. Her courses focus on 20th-century U.S. history. Her latest book is This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip through U.S. History. The book offers an on-the-road, behind-the-steering-wheel retelling of 250 years of U.S. history, starting at Philadelphia’s Revolution-era historic sites and ending at Disneyland in the 20th-century California dream.
Her book G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, received several awards, including the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. G-Man was named a best book of 2022 by the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Publishers Weekly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Smithsonian.
In addition to her teaching and research, she writes for numerous journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, New York Times, and Washington Post. Professor Gage is a graduate of Yale University (1994, BA, American Studies) and Columbia University (2004, PhD, History).
Colleen Shogan
Dr. Colleen Shogan served as the 11th Archivist of the United States, the first woman in American history to lead the National Archives and Records Administration.
Prior to becoming Archivist, Colleen was Senior Vice President at the White House Historical Association, worked in the United States Senate, and served as a senior executive at the Library of Congress and its Congressional Research Service.
She is the 2024 recipient of the American Political Science Association's Hubert Humphrey Award for outstanding public service. Colleen is a Senior Advisor at More Perfect, where she leads "In Pursuit," a nationwide civics project for 2026.
She is a Senior Fellow in Civics Education at Stand Together and an Adjunct Professor of Government at Georgetown University. She also serves as the Board co-chair of the Women's Suffrage National Monument Foundation.
Sean Wilentz
Sean Wilentz studies U.S. political and social history. He received his Ph.D. in history from Yale University. He is the author of several books, including Chants Democratic, The Age of Reagan, Bob Dylan in America, The Politicians & The Egalitarians, and No Property in Man. His The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Formerly a contributing editor to The New Republic, and currently a member of the editorial boards of Dissent and Democracy, he lectures frequently and has contributed some four hundred articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, The American Scholar, The Nation, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel.
He has also given congressional testimony, notably before the House Judiciary Committee in 1998. His writings on American music have earned him two Grammy nominations and two Deems Taylor-ASCAP awards.
Our Partners
This annual event is held in partnership with the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California.
More Perfect, a bipartisan initiative dedicated to engaging institutions and Americans in protecting and renewing American democracy.
In Pursuit is a new initiative from More Perfect, led by the country’s most insightful and respected students of history, to review our first 250 years and distill its most timeless lessons to inspire and inform our future.