“America at 250,” a new one-unit course, brings together three faculty members every week to discuss democracy and governance, the economy, immigration and other issues related to the country’s founding.

The class, cross-listed in the history, american studies and law departments, honors the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence taking place this year.

“The course is an exploration of where America has been, and based on that, where it might be going or might need to go,” said history professor Jonathan Gienepp, who is one of the course instructors.

Last fall, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 brought the idea for the class to Dean of Humanities and Sciences Debra Satz. Satz then assembled a group of faculty from the School of Humanities and Sciences and the Hoover Institution to discuss what the curriculum might look like. Once they decided on a speaker series format, Gienapp asked law professor Pamela Karlan, the co-director of Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, to co-lead the course with him.

Unlike most other classes at Stanford, “America at 250” is less about delivering hard facts, and more about cultivating intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills, according to Karlan.

“Some of it is about knowledge transmission,” she said, “but it’s also designed to transmit a kind of commitment to thinking hard about these issues as you go through your life as a citizen or as a resident of the United States.”

In an article published last year, The New York Times wrote that “knowledge about the foundations and functions of governments, needed for civic engagement, has diminished.” Gienapp, who specializes in the constitutional, political, legal and intellectual history of the early United States, said he sees this course as a way to address decreasing knowledge of civics.

He explained that democracy depends on an informed and engaged citizenry. “You can only self govern if you have an adequate understanding of the world in which you live,” Gienapp said. “I think this is precisely why [the class is] important.”

For him, an “adequate understanding of the world in which you live” does not mean mastery over a particular body of content, though he believes that has value too, but a deeper skill set — the ability to engage with one’s political life.

“How are you going to know whether a ballot referendum is a good idea, or whether or not Candidate A or B is worth your vote if you don’t have a kind of skill set to evaluate things?” Gienapp asked. “That is the sort of thing that we hope the course can help nurse.”

Gienapp and Karlan also designed the class to be interdisciplinary.

“The guiding aim is to bring as many voices from around the campus as possible, to really make it sort of a democratic conversation, if you will, rather than just a collection of historians or law professors,” Gienapp said.

According to Karlan, this interdisciplinary flavor is meant to highlight how different ideas in the Declaration of Independence apply to the arts, humanities and sciences.

“It was a way to get students around the university… to see how every area of intellectual and scholarly focus here at Stanford has something interesting and important to say about the values that were in the Declaration of Independence and how those have played out over time,” Karlan said.

First-year law student Nkemjika Emenike said she chose Stanford Law School specifically because she valued the opportunity to receive an interdisciplinary education through courses like “America at 250.”

“The class just felt like a really good way to get out of the Law School bubble,” she said. “It’s bringing in people from across the university that, as a first year, you don’t really have a lot of opportunity to engage with.”

Another feature that makes the class unique is its low pressure, according to Karlan. She described it as “low stress” but “high intellectual energy” and said it is designed to show how learning can be “really interesting and really enjoyable.”

The final assignment exemplifies this course goal, she noted. Students will use the Declaration of Independence to write an erasure poem — a form of poetry in which the writer removes words from a preexisting text to create a new composition. The course instructors were inspired by Tracy Smith’s “Declaration,” an erasure poem that speaks to the African American experience. Karlan believes this creative assignment will allow students to convey how they have thought about the founding document throughout the class.

Emenike said she appreciates the course’s relaxed nature. “It’s really interesting and thought-provoking, but it’s not stressful,” she said. “It’s a good way to be able to just sit down and hear people who are experts in their field talk about something they’re really passionate about, or something that is really interesting to them, that’s connected to the history of America.”

Another of the course attendees is 92-year-old Thomas (Tom) Ehrlich, a former dean of Stanford Law School. Every Tuesday afternoon, Ehrlich commutes from the Vi, a retirement community in Palo Alto, to CEMEX auditorium.

He learned about the course while on a walk with Karlan, who is a friend of his. “I got excited about [the course] because it sounded like a good way to capture the complexity of America and its history… that would engage absolutely the best faculty from across many different disciplines,” said Ehrlich. “And so far, that’s just what is done.”

He shared the course details with the Vi’s more than 100 residents, a number of whom have joined him in attending the classes.

Ehrlich, who studied government at Harvard University and has been in and out of the federal government all his life, said it is vital to understand the full complexity of the United States and its origins. 

“I think we need to be aware — ‘we’ being American citizens, and others as well — of the variety… and richness of our history,” he said. “I love to learn, and this is a wonderful opportunity to do so.”

According to Karlan, Ehrlich’s and the other Vi residents’ attendance is a reminder to students that engaging with the ideas in the Declaration of Independence is not just something you do in college.

“For a number of classes, you take them in college, and then you might never deal with them again,” she said, “but this is something that you’ll be dealing with on a day to day basis for the rest of your life.”

Gienapp said the course is especially important at this moment in contemporary American politics, when a lot of people feel anxious about the country and its future. He believes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence represents an opportunity to think deeply about America’s founding principles.

“What have we inherited?” Gienapp asked. “What do we want to do with it?”