OU announced Tuesday the guest speaker lineup for the fall and spring Presidential Speakers Series dinners and the university’s Free Speech Week keynote address during the 2025-26 academic year.
Presidential Speakers Series
Akhil Reed Amar, a Sterling Professor of law and political science at Yale University, will present “The Constitution and the Presidency” at the university’s fall Presidential Speakers Series dinner.
Amar has been recognized by the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society for his work in constitutional law, and has been cited by Supreme Court justices in over 50 cases — the second most citations among living scholars under 70.
Amar was also an informal consultant to the television show “The West Wing,” and has appeared on many broadcasts, including “The Colbert Report,” “Morning Joe,” “AC360,” “Fox News @ Night” and “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
Amar is the author of more than 100 law review articles and several books. “The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840,” came out in May 2021 and its sequel, “Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920,” will be published in September. Amar also co-hosts a weekly podcast titled “America’s Constitution,” where he discusses modern Constitutional issues.
The fall dinner is set for 6 p.m. Oct. 16 in the Oklahoma Memorial Union Ballroom.
Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and writer for The Atlantic, will be the guest speaker for the spring dinner set for March 25.
Applebaum’s spring address, titled “Geopolitical Risk: Regionally and Globally,” will cover implications of current world events, according to the release.
Applebaum is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She has also contributed to “Foreign Affairs Magazine,” “The New Republic” and “The New York Review of Books.”
Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Gulag: A History,” is about Soviet concentration camps. Her second book, “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine,” won a Duff Cooper Prize and a Lionel Gelber Prize in 2018.
Free Speech Week keynote address
Wilfred McClay, a Hillsdale College professor and author, will deliver a keynote speech during the university’s annual Free Speech Week on Oct. 21.
McClay’s keynote address, titled “Speech as a Middle Ground,” will take place at 1:30 p.m. in the Oklahoma Memorial Union.
McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in classical history and western civilization at Hillsdale College. Before going to Hillsdale in 2021, he served as G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at OU, and director of the Center for the History of Liberty. His book, “The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America,” received the Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians in 1995.
McClay served for 11 years on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently a member of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, a committee established in 2016 to plan the celebration of 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which will take place in 2026.
McClay has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Academy of Education. He has also served as a Fulbright senior lecturer in American history at the University of Rome.
OU President Joseph Harroz Jr. wrote in a press release that he is excited to welcome such academic leaders in politics and history to Oklahoma.
“Our university community is strengthened when we engage with unique, informed perspectives and the knowledge these experts possess is critical to understanding some of the biggest national and global conversations happening today,” Harroz said.
This story was edited by Ana Barboza, Natalie Armour and Thomas Pablo. Gretchen Schultz and Sophie Hemker copy edited this story.
