Lincoln and the Challenge of American Statesmanship

How should an American leader act in times of crisis? Can a statesman be both a practical politician and a moral leader for a nation? In what ways does the American constitutional system shape presidential leadership? President Abraham Lincoln confronted these questions in his quest to save the American union and to end the evil of slavery.  

Join the School of Civic Leadership for a Presidents’ Day event on “Lincoln and the Challenge of American Statesmanship.” In a conversation moderated by Dr. Dana Stauffer, SCL Visiting Professors Benjamin Kleinerman and Diana Schaub will discuss Lincoln’s approach to leadership, the crucial decisions of his wartime presidency, and the lessons he can teach modern American statesmen. 

Co-sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Center for Core Texts and Ideas. 

Benjamin A. Kleinerman is the R.W. Morrison Professor of Political Science at Baylor University where he teaches classes on political thought and political institutions. He also is on the Board of Directors of the Jack Miller Center. Kleinerman is the Chair of the American Political Thought section of the American Political Science Association (APSA), and he has published articles in Perspectives on Politics (APSA), American Political Science Review, Texas Law Review, and several edited volumes including Nomos and The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. He has also been invited to give talks at Yale University, the University of Notre Dame, Xavier University, Kenyon College, and the University of Cincinnati. Kleinerman’s first book, The Discretionary President: The Promise and Peril of Executive Power, has been reviewed in The New Republic and Political Science Quarterly. He has also published on other subjects including literature and politics and American political history.  He is currently completing a book, The Crisis Presidency.

Diana Schaub is professor emerita of political science at Loyola University Maryland and a non-resident senior scholar in the social, cultural, and constitutional studies department at the American Enterprise Institute. She was the Garwood Teaching Fellow at Princeton University in 2011-12 and visiting professor of political theory in the government department at Harvard University in 2018, 2020, and 2022. From 2004 to 2009 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. She was the recipient of the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters in 2001 and is the author of Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters” along with numerous book chapters and scholarly articles in the fields of political philosophy and American political thought. She is a coeditor (with Amy and Leon Kass) of What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. She is a member of the board of directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and sits on the publication committee of National Affairs. Her book on Lincoln’s rhetoric and statesmanship, His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, appeared in 2021 from St. Martin’s Press.

Dana Stauffer is the Co-Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Core Texts and Ideas and an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in political theory. Her particular research interests include classical political thought, the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, and politics and drama. She teaches courses on ancient political thought, American political thought, and politics and literature. Her work has appeared in journals such as the Review of Politics, Political Science Reviewer, Journal of Politics, and the American Political Science Review, among others. She is currently at work on a book manuscript, A World Altogether New: Tocqueville on the Modern Moral Situation.