In light of the tragic killing of Charlie Kirk, the culture of American Campuses and Free Speech - which Kirk fought so hard for - are more relevant than ever. Profs. Hadley Arkes & Justin Dyer will share a discussion of a new way to look at free speech, its purpose, and the best way to restore the role of the American Universities.

Friday, October 24, 2025

Capital Hilton Hotel

1001 16th St NW,, Washington, DC 20036

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Doors Open: 5:00 pm, Presentation: 5:30 pm

Reception to Follow

Hadley Arkes is Founder & Co-Director of the James Wilson Institute. He is an emeritus member of the Amherst College Faculty, teaching since 1966 and serving as the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence since 1987. He has written eight books, mostly with Princeton and Cambridge University Press. Among the books at Princeton have been: The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), and The Return of George Sutherland (1994). With Cambridge Press, he has done Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (2002), and Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law (2010). His most recent book, with Regnery Press, is Mere Natural Law (2023). His articles have appeared in professional journals. Apart from his writing in more scholarly formats, he has become known to a wider audience through his writings in the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and National Review. He has been a contributor also to First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title.

Justin Dyer is professor of government and the inaugural dean of UT Austin's School of Civic Leadership.

Dyer writes and teaches in the fields of American political thought, jurisprudence and constitutionalism, with an emphasis on the perennial philosophical tradition of natural law. He is the author or editor of eight books and numerous articles, essays and book reviews. His most recent book, with Kody Cooper, is The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding, published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press. His previous books with Cambridge University Press include C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law (2016); Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning (2013); and Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition (2012). He also is co-editor of the two-volume constitutional law casebook American Constitutional Law (4th edition, West Academic), which has been adopted at leading universities across the country.

Previously, he was a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, where he served as the founding director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, a signature academic center for the study of American political thought and history. After attending the University of Oklahoma on a wrestling scholarship, he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government at The University of Texas at Austin.