Research & Source Materials

Lance Banning
Hallam Professor of History
University of Kentucky

Professor Banning held the John Adams Chair in American History at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and served as Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh. Two of his award-winning books (The Jeffersonian Persuasion and Jefferson and Madison) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History.

James Ceaser
Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs
University of Virginia

Professor Ceaser is the author of Reconstructing America and has taught at Harvard University, the University of Montesquieu, the University of Basel, and Marquette University.

Robert H. Ferrell
Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus
Indiana University

Professor Ferrell was educated and has also taught at Yale University. He is the author or editor of more than forty books, and was described as “the dean of American presidential historians” by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Charles R. Kesler
Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government
Claremont McKenna College

Professor Kesler is Director of the Henry Salvatori Center at Claremont McKenna College and former chairman of its Department of Government. He has written extensively on the American founding and American political thought, and is co-editor of a widely-used edition of The Federalist Papers. He is the editor of The Claremont Review of Books.

Alf J. Mapp, Jr.
Eminent Scholar, Emeritus and Louis I. Jaffe Professor of History, Emeritus
Old Dominion University

Professor Mapp is the author of Thomas Jefferson: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity (a Book-of-the-Month Club featured selection), Thomas Jefferson: Passionate Pilgrim, and has authored or edited more than another dozen books. A reference source for Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book, his numerous awards include Commonwealth of Virginia Cultural Laureate and a medal from the Republic of France’s Comite Francais du Bicentenaire de l’Independence des Etats-Unis.

Harvey C. Mansfield
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government
Harvard University

Professor Mansfield has taught at Harvard for nearly four decades, chaired the Department of Government for several years, and is the author or editor of a dozen books, several of which address the era of the Founding Fathers. A former Guggenheim Fellow and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, he served as President of the New England Political Science Association and on the Council of the American Political Science Association.

David N. Mayer
Professor of Law and History
Capital University

Professor Mayer holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in History, and is the author of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson and numerous book chapters and articles concerning Thomas Jefferson. He earned his Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Merrill Peterson.

Forrest McDonald
Distinguished Research Professor of History, Emeritus
University of Alabama

Professor McDonald has also taught at Brown University and was the James Pinckney Harrison Professor of History at the College of William & Mary. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author of The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson and numerous other books, and his many awards and prizes include Thomas Jefferson Lecturer with the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Paul A. Rahe
Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Professor in Western Heritage
Hillsdale College

Professor Rahe was educated at Yale and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He served as Chair of the University of Tulsa Department of History for several years, has also taught at Yale and Cornell, and is the author of the highly-acclaimed, three-volume set, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution. He has received numerous academic prizes and held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Center for the History of Freedom, and the Institute of Current World Affairs.

Thomas Traut
Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics
School of Medicine

University of North Carolina

Professor Traut is Director of Graduate Studies and a former Ford Foundation and National Institute of Health Fellow. He is the author or coauthor of more than seventy publications, and shares his interest in Jefferson with his playwright wife, Karyn, who researched the Jefferson-Hemings relationship for seven years in preparation for her play Saturday’s Children.

Robert F. Turner (Chairman)
Cofounder (1981), Center for National Security Law

University of Virginia School of Law Professor Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law, and is a former Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College and a Distinguished Lecturer at West Point. He has taught both in Virginia’s Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and the Law School, and is the author or editor of more than a dozen books. A former president of the congressionally established U.S. Institute of Peace, he has had a strong professional interest in Jefferson for more than four decades.

Walter E. Williams
John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics
George Mason University

Professor Williams is Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University and the author of six books. He was a nationally syndicated columnist.

Jean Yarbrough
Gary M. Pendy Professor of Social Sciences
Chair, Department of Government

Bowdoin College

Professor Yarbrough is a former National Endowment for the Humanities Bicentennial Felow. She has lectured at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, is a consultant to the Jefferson Papers project, and serves on the editorial board of both the Review of Politics and Polity. Her numerous publications include American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People and “Race and the Moral Foundation of the American Republic: Another Look at the Declaration.”ription text goes here