Across the street from our office on Indiana University’s campus, Gilbert Stuart’s iconic portraits of George Washington hang on the walls of the Eskenazi Museum of Art. In the Lilly Library right next door to us sits an original copy of the Declaration of Independence.
These artifacts are a testament to Indiana University’s commitment to the commemoration of our nation’s 250th anniversary.
More important is what these works demand of us on this historic occasion — not idle relics but living witnesses to civic renewal in an age of deep polarization.
As directors of the Political and Civic Engagement Program at IU and members of the College of Arts and Sciences’ America 250 planning committee, we have worked to ensure this commemoration takes seriously both our triumphs and our travails in pursuit of a more perfect union.
PACE’s Spring 2026 Issue Forum, a democratic deliberation centered on a pressing civic question, explored the meaning of inalienable rights in contemporary civic life. At a moment when questions about civil rights and democratic norms felt anything but abstract, we heard from students who feared that the rights they had taken for granted were being rapidly eroded.
We also heard from international students who expressed gratitude for the opportunities and freedoms they had found in their adopted country.
Whatever differences students held, there was strong convergence on one point: Americans needed to engage more meaningfully with each other, especially where they disagree most intensely.
These sentiments reflect what Harvard political philosopher Danielle Allen calls “reflective patriotism.” Rather than uncritical praise of our nation’s virtues or cynical reduction of America to its worst moments, reflective patriotism calls us into national solidarity: a commitment to strive toward a better democracy while recognizing deeply uncomfortable truths. Honesty and hope are not at odds with one another; each is the condition that makes the other possible.
The capacity of reflective patriotism to bridge the American divide found its fullest expression in a talk last semester given by Braver Angels’ nNational aAmbassador, John Wood Jr. Wood’s stirring words invoked two ideologically distinct figures who envisioned a freer and more just America.
One was civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who inspired activists to nonviolent civil disobedience as a means of fighting oppression and injustice. The other was pioneering conservative thinker Russell Kirk, who appealed to Americans’ moral imagination to preserve inherited blessings and foster human dignity.
What unites the two, according to Wood, is an ethic of love. Not the sentimental love we feel toward those closest to us, but an enduring love of humanity that recognizes our destinies are inseparably bound together across lines of race, gender, politics and culture. A love that commands, in King’s words, that “we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
George Washington’s regal face and Jefferson’s elegant prose are displayed on our campus not because they were perfect men who merit unconditional reverence. They were not. Their presence, 250 years after our nation’s birth, reminds us that flawed people navigating desperate circumstances can inspire hope for our common humanity.
That is what these artifacts demand of us on this historic occasion: that even in times of intense division, we are called upon to “mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Lisa-Marie and Mark are Director and Associate Director of the Political and Civic Engagement Program at Indiana University. They live in Bloomington.
