Join us for the first of three lunchtime conversations where participants will have the opportunity to engage directly with leading political figures and gain a clearer understanding of the fissures shaping American politics today.
Conservatives control the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Yet this apparent unity masks deep divisions within conservatism itself, with major philosophical and policy disagreements. This lunch series brings activists, a retired lawmaker, and a leading thinker to campus to explore the competing visions of conservatism, as well as the broader fractious moment in American politics. Drawing on their diverse roles in the political sphere, speakers will shed light on the complexities of the political process.
Lunch will be provided.
Guest Speaker
Bob Inglis is the Executive Director of republicEn.org. He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1992, having never run for office before. He represented Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, from 1993-1998, unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings in 1998, and then returned to the practice of commercial real estate law in Greenville, S.C.
In 2004, he was re-elected to Congress and served until losing re-election in the South Carolina Republican primary of 2010.
In 2011, Inglis went full-time into promoting free enterprise action on climate change and launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative (“E&EI”) at George Mason University in July 2012. In the fall of 2014, E&EI rebranded to become republicEn.org.
For his work on climate change, Inglis was given the 2015 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. He appears in the film Merchants of Doubt and in the Showtime series YEARS of Living Dangerously (episodes 3 and 4), and he’s spoken at TEDxBeaconStreet and TEDxJacksonville.
Inglis served as a Resident Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics in 2011, a Visiting Energy Fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in 2012, and Resident Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics in 2014.
Inglis grew up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, went to Duke University for college, met and married his college sweetheart, graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law and practiced commercial real estate law in Greenville, S.C., before and between his years in Congress. Bob and Mary Anne Inglis have five children (a son and four daughters). They live on a small farm in northern Greenville County, South Carolina.
Moderator
Brian Rosenwald is Senior Affiliate, Partnership for Innovation, Cross-Sector Collaboration, Leadership, and Organization, University of Pennsylvania, and an instructor at Penn. He serves as the Editor-In-chief of Made By History, a Washington Post history section and is the author of Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States (2019). He works at the intersection of 4 disciplines – history, political science, media studies, and communications. His scholarly interests include Congress, the media, public policy, and the Supreme Court. He also has significant interest in the substance of public policy and in helping scholars to reach a wider audience with their work.
This event is co-sponsored by the Red and Blue Exchange and the SNF Paideia Program.
