Ashbrook Center

Ashbrook Center Educating students, teachers, and citizens in the history and Founding principles of our country. Follow us on twitter

The Ashbrook Center, located on the campus of Ashland University, seeks to restore and strengthen the capacities of the American people for constitutional self-government. Through undergraduate, graduate, and civic programs, the Ashbrook Center is the nation’s largest university based educator in the enduring principles and practice of free government in the United States. Dedicated in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, the Ashbrook Center is an independent center governed by its own board and responsible for raising all of the funds necessary for its many programs.

Jeff is joined by Jonathan Turley - Georgetown University law professor, author, and constitutional law expert - to disc...
09/30/2026

Jeff is joined by Jonathan Turley - Georgetown University law professor, author, and constitutional law expert - to discuss the revolutionary roots of America, and how a few key distinctions between our revolution and that of France kept America from devouring itself, as so many revolutions do.

Link in the comments.

Bonus episode this week! Don't miss Jonathan Turley as he and Jeff discuss his new book, and the role of rage and revolu...
09/28/2026

Bonus episode this week! Don't miss Jonathan Turley as he and Jeff discuss his new book, and the role of rage and revolutionary ideas and impulses in American history.
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Here is a question worth sitting with: when did Americans start assuming that whatever the Supreme Court says the Consti...
09/23/2026

Here is a question worth sitting with: when did Americans start assuming that whatever the Supreme Court says the Constitution means, it means?

Not in 1788. Not under John Marshall. Andrew Jackson vetoed the Bank of the United States thirteen years after the Court upheld it, and said flatly that he was not bound by their ruling. Marshall, reading that veto, complained about the policy but not about Jackson's claim. Lincoln rejected Dred Scott as binding on anyone outside the case and acted accordingly as president.

The Court did not explicitly claim final authority over constitutional meaning until 1958.

This week on The American Idea, Jeff Sikkenga talks with Professor Matthew Franck of the Witherspoon Institute about how an institution Hamilton called the least dangerous branch became the one everyone waits on.

Link in the comments.

The Supreme Court has long been accepted as the final say over questions of constitutionality - but is that how the Foun...
09/22/2026

The Supreme Court has long been accepted as the final say over questions of constitutionality - but is that how the Founders intended it? In this week's episode, we examine the USSC and the evolution of judicial review.

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In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette came back to a country he had not seen in forty years. He was sixty-six and walked wit...
09/09/2026

In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette came back to a country he had not seen in forty years. He was sixty-six and walked with a limp. The America he found had tripled in population and reached the Mississippi. Over thirteen months he visited all twenty-four states, and nearly everywhere he went the crowds behaved as though a father had come home.

Historian Ryan Cole, author of The Last Adieu, joins Jeff Sikkenga to explain why a nation two years shy of its fiftieth birthday reacted this way, what happened when Lafayette and Jefferson finally saw each other again at Monticello, and what Lafayette was trying to tell his hosts about the work still left undone.

He arrived in 1777 at nineteen, paid his own way, and took a bullet at Brandywine. When the Marquis de Lafayette came ba...
09/08/2026

He arrived in 1777 at nineteen, paid his own way, and took a bullet at Brandywine. When the Marquis de Lafayette came back in 1824, the country he found had tripled in population and stretched to the Mississippi. Americans mobbed his carriage, named their towns for him, and told him plainly that they owed him their liberty.

On the next episode of The American Idea, historian Ryan Cole joins Jeff Sikkenga to talk about Lafayette's thirteen-month farewell tour: the reunion with Jefferson at Monticello, the strange national mood on the eve of the 50th anniversary, and what Lafayette quietly told his hosts about the work the Revolution had left unfinished.

Subscribe now so you don't miss it. Link in comments.

Every empire in history had treated its outer provinces as something to extract from. Americans had just fought a war be...
08/26/2026

Every empire in history had treated its outer provinces as something to extract from. Americans had just fought a war because they believed Britain intended exactly that for them. So in 1787, when Congress had to decide what to do with the enormous territory north and west of the Ohio River, the obvious answer was to build colonies and rule them from a distance.

The Northwest Ordinance did something else. It laid out a path by which territories would govern themselves, write their own constitutions, and enter the union as equals. It guaranteed religious liberty before the First Amendment existed. It banned slavery, imperfectly, and gave a generation of opponents of slavery a line worth defending.

Peter Onuf, one of the country's leading historians of Jefferson and the founding, joins Jeff Sikkenga on this episode of The American Idea to explain how a law most Americans have never read shaped the country they live in.

Listen now. Link in comments.

This week: why you should care about a 239 year-old law.Every empire in history had treated its outer provinces as somet...
08/24/2026

This week: why you should care about a 239 year-old law.

Every empire in history had treated its outer provinces as something to extract from. Americans had just fought a war because they believed Britain intended exactly that for them. So in 1787, when Congress had to decide what to do with the enormous territory north and west of the Ohio River, the obvious answer was to build colonies and rule them from a distance.

The Northwest Ordinance did something else. It laid out a path by which territories would govern themselves, write their own constitutions, and enter the union as equals. It guaranteed religious liberty before the First Amendment existed. It banned slavery, imperfectly, and yet gave a generation of opponents of slavery a line worth defending.

Peter Onuf, one of the country's leading historians of Jefferson and the founding, joins Jeff Sikkenga on this episode of The American Idea to explain how a law most Americans have never read shaped the country they live in.

Subscription link in the comments.

Our special bonus episode is live today. Young Washington does something unusual for a founder film: it spends most of i...
08/19/2026

Our special bonus episode is live today. Young Washington does something unusual for a founder film: it spends most of its running time on failure. Washington wants a royal commission he will never get. He builds a fort in a location he has been told is indefensible. He refuses to move. He loses.

Dr. Stephen Knott, emeritus professor at the Naval War College and one of the scholars who reviewed the screenplay, joins Cara Rogers Stevens to sort the record from the invention. The class contempt the British showed colonial militia was real. Washington's self-education after his father's death was real. The death of Christopher Gist at Fort Necessity was not, and neither was the romance. What the film gets right is the character, and Knott makes the case that this is the standard historical film should actually be held to.

Have a listen and tell us whether you think a filmmaker owes us the details or the essence. Link in comments.

Special bonus episode this week. Young Washington recently became available to stream, and it does something unusual for...
08/17/2026

Special bonus episode this week. Young Washington recently became available to stream, and it does something unusual for a founder film: it spends most of its running time on failure. Washington wants a royal commission he will never get. He builds a fort in a location he has been told is indefensible. He refuses to move. He loses.

Dr. Stephen Knott, emeritus professor at the Naval War College and one of the scholars who reviewed the screenplay, joins Cara Rogers Stevens to sort the record from the creative license. The class contempt the British showed colonial militia was real. Washington's self-education after his father's death was real. The death of Christopher Gist at Fort Necessity was not, and neither was the romance. What the film gets right is the character, and Knott makes the case that this is the standard historical film should actually be held to.

Link in comments.

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401 College Avenue
Ashland, OH
44805

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Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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