Constitution Day at the Byrd CenterThe Byrd Center held its thirteenth annual Tom E. Moses Memorial Lecture on the United States Constitution on Thursday, September 14, 2017. The lecturer was Ganesh Sitaraman, author of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic. Sitaraman is an Associate Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He served as policy director and senior counsel to Senator Elizabeth Warren and has commented on foreign and domestic policy in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor.
In an original and provocative contribution to the current debates over income inequality in America, Sitaraman argues that economic inequality represents more than a moral or economic matter; it threatens the core of our republic. Sitaraman will trace how a strong middle-class served as a bulwark against class warfare in America for nearly two centuries and was a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system to function properly. |
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About the Moses Memorial LectureThe Moses Memorial Lecture is named for the late Tom E. Moses, a longtime civil libertarian, activist, and founder of the Eastern Panhandle branch of the ACLU-WV. The inaugural Moses Lecture was given by Senator Robert C. Byrd in 2005. You can view videos of some of our past Moses Memorial Lecture on the Byrd Center YouTube Channel >>
Past Constitution Day Speakers: 2005: Senator Robert C. Byrd
2006: Joseph Onek 2007: Anthony Williams 2008: Dr. Donald A. Ritchie 2009: David Cole 2010: Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia and Bob Edgar 2011: Richard Dreyfuss 2012: Dr. Michael Austin 2013: Dr. Raymond Smock 2014: Clay Risen 2015: Dr. Ralph Young 2016: Dr. Elizabeth Hinton 2017: Ganesh Sitaraman |
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