The Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS) is excited to announce its 2nd Annual Hamilton National Institute (HNI), to be held from June 2nd through June 9th, 2019 in Washington, D.C. At HNI, students are opened to the foundations of the Hamiltonian worldview and begin to master American global leadership’s concepts and strategies. Comprising two daily seminar sessions with premier scholars and public servants, HNI explores the essence of strategic, defense and economic statecraft. Students engage with America’s historical stature as a global champion of democracy, and develop critical, creative approaches to the challenges facing American global leadership.
Augmenting this academic experience, students interact with senior national security officials, eminent thinkers, and recent AHS alumni establishing their public service careers. Distinguished from other academic opportunities, HNI participants discuss core national interests under expert guidance, and analyze national strategy with the leaders who craft it.
Topics include:
American Exceptionalism with Dr. Alan Levine from American University
War and Politics with Dr. Fred Kagan from the American Enterprise Institute
Grand Strategy with Dr. Colin Dueck from George Mason University
American Economic Order with Dr. Phil Levy from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Diplomacy and Democracy with Elliott Abrams from the Council on Foreign Relations
Additionally, students complete a strategic crisis simulation, as well as numerous briefings with authorities on foreign and defense policy. For information on last year’s inaugural HNI, click HERE. This is a fully-funded program; housing, most meals, and travel vouchers are provided.
Drawing from the 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students who annually participate in AHS programs, HNI’s highly selective application process yields students with sterling academic credentials, exemplary campus leadership, and avid interest in public service. While only a small number of students are selected, this allows for the intensive discursive experience so crucial to HNI’s success.
We seek students who, through their academic experiences and professional ambitions, affirm with AHS the importance of maintaining American international leadership and supporting America’s democratic allies, and who further understand that American greatness rests on respect for individual liberty under limited government, military strength, economic freedom, and democratic society.
Students who meet the following requirements are eligible to apply:
Undergraduate and graduate students who are enrolled in a degree-granting programs in Spring 2019
GPA of 3.4 or higher preferred
Not required to be an AHS chapter officer, but preferred
The deadline to apply is February 11th, 2019.
Application Instructions:
Please upload the following documents in your application (PDF or Word format only):
Résumé
Personal Statement: Describe your background, intellectual interests and goals, as well as how the Alexander Hamilton Society could contribute to these. (500 words or less)
Unofficial Transcripts from all undergraduate or graduate institutions
An academic writing sample (10 pages maximum, double-spaced)
The names and contact information, (phone numbers and email addresses) of at least 2 references, preferably professors or employers.
High resolution head shot (this does not have to be a PDF)
We look forward to welcoming our second cohort to the AHS National Institute!
Please contact Cherise (cbritt@hamsoc.org) if you have any questions.
The Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS) is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, membership organization dedicated to promoting constructive debate on basic principles and contemporary issues in foreign, economic, and national security policy. As we build a national network of outstanding students, faculty, and professionals, we sponsor debates at colleges and universities, as well as in major cities, and provide other opportunities for our members to flourish intellectually, professionally, and personally.
Our members—on 50 campuses, as well as in New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC—are united by basic convictions about the United States and its role in the world.
Our HNI Distinguished Instructors (clockwise from top left): Drs. Alan Levine, Colin Dueck, Frederick Kagan, Phil Levy and Elliott Abrams
An expert in American government’s intellectual origins, Alan Levine is the Director of the Political Theory Institute and Associate Professor in the Department of Government at American University. He is the recipient of academic awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hoover Institution, University of London and Princeton University. His book Sensual Philosophy: Toleration, Skepticism, and Montaigne’s Politics of the Self was published in 2001. Levine has worked for the U.S. Department of State in Dakar, Senegal, and regularly consults with the U.S. State Department's International Visitors Program. He earned his B.A. at the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University.
Colin Dueck is an Associate Professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. A prolific author on the subjects of American foreign and security policy, Dueck’s books include The Obama Doctrine: Grand Strategy Today, Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II and Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture and Change in American Grand Strategy. Dueck has testified before Congress on international politics, is a member of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and International Institute for Strategic Studies, and advises George Mason’s AHS Chapter. As a Rhodes Scholar, Dueck studied international relations at Oxford University in Great Britain.
As Director of the Critical Threats Project and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Frederick Kagan studies defense policy, the American military, and Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2007, Kagan’s report Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, established him as an architect of the decisive troop surge strategy adopted by General David Petraeus. His prodigious publications range from Lessons for a Long War to The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805. He formerly taught military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Kagan holds a B.A. in Soviet and East European studies and Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history from Yale University.
Presently a senior fellow on the global economy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and professor in Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Phil Levy’s contributions to American political economy span policymaking, analysis and teaching. Previously he has taught students in business at the University of Virginia and Georgetown, in international and public affairs at Columbia, and economics at Yale. He served as senior economist for trade on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and later as an international economic adviser on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s policy planning staff. Dr. Levy holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Economics from Stanford University.
Now a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams has influenced American Middle East policy as both a scholar and public servant. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration, supervising U.S. policy in the Middle East. Secretary of State George Shultz honored Abrams with the Distinguished Service Award for his contributions to foreign policy in the Reagan Administration. Abrams scholarly publications include Security and Sacrifice, Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring. Abrams teaches foreign policy at Georgetown University, and, among many contributions to public knowledge, served as a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. He holds a B.A. and J.D. from Harvard University and an M.A. from the London School of Economics.