Rogers M. Smith

Christopher H. Browne Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Political Science

Phone: 484-343-0334
rogerss@sas.upenn.edu

School: Arts & Sciences 
General Topic Areas: citizenship and immigration; civil rights and civil liberties; American constitutionalism; American political thought; racial and ethnic politics

Sample Talk Topics or Titles:

• The Declaration of Independence and American Dreams
  The Declaration of Independence revealed both the American revolutionaries’ aspirational new ideals and their often-conflicting established values and interests. As a result, the Declaration has both inspired reform causes and justified restraints on radical changes throughout American history. Professor Rogers M. Smith illuminates the tensions within the Declaration, the many roles it has played in American history, and what it might meant to take the Declaration as central to American national identity today.
• Higher Powers: Superheroes and American Visions of Virtue and Justice
  Revolutionary Americans used force in violation of British laws to oppose what they saw as imperial injustices, and they defended their actions through appeal to higher laws, the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Throughout U.S. history, Americans have admired “outlaw law enforcers,” vigilantes who have acted outside the law to serve justice and the common good, from James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye to Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger to Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo. Today the most popular American vigilantes are superheroes. Professor Smith, a lifelong reader of comic books, despite his teachers’ disapproval, discusses the distinct visions of virtue and justice exemplified by three of the nation’s most popular superheroes, Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. 
• Toward Better Stories of National American Identity
  Drawing on That Is Not Who We Are!, his book derived from his Castle Lectures in Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University, political scientist Rogers M. Smith argues that Americans will inevitably embrace differing narratives of what it means to be American—but that there are elements that most Americans can agree all good accounts of American national identity should possess.
• America’s Conflicting Constitutional Visions: The Quest for Common Ground
  America’s severe political polarization is fueled in part by clashes over two rival visions of the American Constitution, one traditionalist, one progressive. Both visions, however, are embedded in the text of the Constitution as amended, and the Reconstruction era amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—share features of each. Rogers M. Smith argues that if Americans wish to find more common ground, they can find a basis for doing so in the sense of national purpose those amendments embody.

Bio: Rogers M. Smith has been Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn since 2001, after 21 years teaching at Yale. His many publications include Civic Ideals, a 1998 Pulitzer Prize Finalist. Smith has been Penn’s Associate Dean for Social Sciences and President of the American Political Science Association. He was founding director of the Penn DCC Program, the forerunner of the Andrea Mitchell Center, and co-founder of the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia. He received five teaching prizes from Penn and Yale. Smith is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Philosophical Society.