George Washington Forum News and Events

Jeremy Black (University of Exeter)

Jeremy Black MBE is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He studied at Cambridge and Oxford before joining Durham Univesity as a lecturer in 1980. He joined Exeter University as Established Chair in History in 1996. A prolific lecturer and author, he has published more than 100 books. Many concern aspects of eighteenth-century British, European and American political, diplomatic and military history, but he has also published on the history of the press, cartography, warfare, culture and on the nature and uses of history. His most recent book is English Nationalism: A Short History (2018). This event is co-sponsored with the Contemporary History Institute.

William Messenger (National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation)

William Messenger is a staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. He graduated with a B.B.A. from OHIO in 1997 before earning his J.D. from George Washington University in 2001. He has litigated nearly 100 cases, including over a dozen at the Appellate-level, on behalf of NRWLD Foundation-aided employees and other individuals. His cases defend workers’ freedom from compulsory unionism and focus on the First Amendment and other constitutional rights. He has argued twice before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2014, he successfully argued Harris v. Quinn, securing a ruling that requiring homecare providers to pay union fees violated the First Amendment. Four years later, he also briefed and successfully argued Janus v. AFSCME, in which the Supreme Court ruled that non-union government workers cannot be required to pay union fees as a condition of employment.

Keith Baker (Stanford), Mark Blitz (Claremont McKenna), Michael Braddick (Sheffield), and Catherine Zuckert (Notre Dame) will deliver plenary lectures

Jason Peacey (University College, London)

Jason Peacey is Professor of Early Modern British History at University College, London. He received his PhD from Cambridge University and before coming to UCL, he was a research fellow at the History of Parliament Trust. His publications include Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (2004) and Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (2013), in addition to three edited books and dozens of articles and book chapters. He is currently working on print culture in seventeenth-century Europe.

Thomas C. Leonard (Princeton)

Thomas C. Leonard is Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University and Lecturer in the Department of Economics, which has twice awarded him the Richard D. Quandt Prize for outstanding teaching. His book, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era (2016), won the 2017 Joseph J. Spengler Best Book Prize from the History of Economics Society.