Isaac Kramnick

If the First Amendment protects the separation of church and state, why have atheists had to fight for their rights? In this valuable work, R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick reveal the fascinating history of atheism in America and the legal challenges to federal and state laws that made atheists second-class citizens.

God occupies our nation’s consciousness, even defining to many what it means to be American. Nonbelievers have often had second-class legal status and have had to fight for their rights as citizens. As R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick demonstrate in their sharp and convincing work, avowed atheists were derided since the founding of the nation. Even Thomas Paine fell into disfavor and his role as a patriot forgotten. Popular Republican Robert Ingersoll could not be elected in the nineteenth century due to his atheism, and the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton was shunned when she questioned biblical precepts about women’s roles. Moore and Kramnick lay out this fascinating history and the legal cases that have questioned religious supremacy. It took until 1961 for the Supreme Court to ban religious tests for state officials, despite Article 6 of the Constitution. Still, every one of the fifty states continues to have God in its constitution. The authors discuss these cases and more current ones, such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which address whether personal religious beliefs supersede secular ones. In Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic, the authors also explore the dramatic rise of an "atheist awakening" and the role of organizations intent on holding the country to the secular principles it was founded upon.

In their history of Cornell since 1940, Glenn C. Altschuler and Isaac Kramnick examine the institution in the context of the emergence of the modern research university. The book examines Cornell during the Cold War, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, antiapartheid protests, the ups and downs of varsity athletics, the women's movement, the opening of relations with China, and the creation of Cornell NYC Tech. It relates profound, fascinating, and little-known incidents involving the faculty, administration, and student life, connecting them to the "Cornell idea" of freedom and responsibility. The authors had access to all existing papers of the presidents of Cornell, which deeply informs their respectful but unvarnished portrait of the university. Institutions, like individuals, develop narratives about themselves. Cornell constructed its sense of self, of how it was special and different, on the eve of World War II, when America defended democracy from fascist dictatorship. Cornell's fifth president, Edmund Ezra Day, and Carl Becker, its preeminent historian, discerned what they called a Cornell "soul," a Cornell "character," a Cornell "personality," a Cornell "tradition"—and they called it "freedom." "The Cornell idea" was tested and contested in Cornell's second seventy-five years. Cornellians used the ideals of freedom and responsibility as weapons for change—and justifications for retaining the status quo; to protect academic freedom—and to rein in radical professors; to end in loco parentis and parietal rules, to preempt panty raids, pornography, and pot parties, and to reintroduce regulations to protect and promote the physical and emotional well-being of students; to add nanofabrication, entrepreneurship, and genomics to the curriculum—and to require language courses, freshmen writing, and physical education. In the name of freedom (and responsibility), black students occupied Willard Straight Hall, the anti–Vietnam War SDS took over the Engineering Library, proponents of divestment from South Africa built campus shantytowns, and Latinos seized Day Hall. In the name of responsibility (and freedom), the university reclaimed them. The history of Cornell since World War II, Altschuler and Kramnick believe, is in large part a set of variations on the narrative of freedom and its partner, responsibility, the obligation to others and to one's self to do what is right and useful, with a principled commitment to the Cornell community—and to the world outside the Eddy Street gate.

Refutes the claims of the religious right that America was founded as a Christian nation, and emphasizes that separation of church and state was designed to guarantee religious freedom, in a volume updated with a new chapter exploring the role of religion in public life in George W. Bush's America. Reprint.

"Cornell is unique among American research universities and in the Ivy League.... It aspires to the ideals of Ezra Cornell, who founded an institution 'where any one person could find instruction in any study.'... Cornell has played a distinctive role in democratizing higher education, while helping to shape the American university's post-Civil War commitment to useful service to American society and to the world. The undergraduate experience has been the heart of life on East Hill, 'far above Cayuga's Waters.' Its undergraduates have lived the ideals carved into the Eddy Street gate: 'So enter that daily thou mayest become more learned and thoughtful. So depart that daily thou mayest become more useful to thy country and to mankind.' It is our privilege and honor to single out and, in most cases, pay tribute to Cornell's most distinguished sons and daughters."—from the Preface Graduates of Cornell University have achieved remarkable success in all areas from literature and photography to economics and agriculture, from finance and chemistry to athletics and the stage. They have held positions of leadership in boardrooms and classrooms, blazed new paths in medicine and journalism, acted on lofty ideals and strong ambition. Cornellians are regulars in Stockholm, on the bestseller lists, and in high office. Faced with all that excellence, the authors of this book sifted through encyclopedias, archives, and alumni records and engaged in conversations and debates to arrive at a final group of one hundred notable men and women who completed an undergraduate degree program at Cornell. These alumni are representative in their distinction (and, in a few cases, for their notoriety). Each Cornellian is profiled in a witty and erudite essay, each accompanied—with one telling exception—by a portrait. In immortalizing a selection of notable Cornellians from a bit more than the first hundred years of the university, the authors arrive at a portrait of Cornell itself, "a world-class institution with an egalitarian soul" where undergraduates are guided to exceed their own goals and change the world, too.

"Behind this study lie two questions. Why is Bolingbroke, known primarily as a rationalist philosopher of the Enlightenment, so worshipped by English conservatives who are themselves, since Burke, so set against what the Enlightenment represents in political, social, and religious thought? The second question relates to Bolingbroke's public life. How does one explain the intense animosity between Bolingbroke and Walpole which provides the energy for English political life between 1725 and 1740? Is it mere vindictiveness, ambition, jealousy, or the inevitable reflex of the 'outsider' against the 'insider'? Or is it, as the late Victorian writers thought, their falling out at Eton which forever fated them to be protagonists?"—from the Preface.