The Coolidge Foundation’s second annual Dallas Debate Tournament was held on Saturday, 15 April at Southern Methodist University. Local debate students, and students from as far away as Houston, came together to debate the resolution “A significant tariff on imported goods from Mexico is a good policy for the U.S. economy.” More than 30 students spent the day debating this very timely issue.

April 6th marks the Centenary of America’s entry into the Great War, as World War I was call back then.

Some of our anniversaries are more significant than others. This Great War anniversary is most definitely one that warrants public recognition and solemn commemoration. And it is especially meaningful for those of us born in the last century.

Why? The war was a mighty engine of destruction and change. The old order of things was consumed by it, with a new order taking its place. The war, no doubt, became the greatest historical force shaping the 20th Century. For example, in its wake, the United States would rise to the status of a major world power. In far off Russia, the Czarist regime would be replaced the Soviet Union, which would attempt through force and subterfuge to impose its communist ideology on the world. In the Middle East, the consequences of the break up of the Ottoman Empire into small, artificial states still haunt us to this day.

If one crosses New England’s valleys and hills one will inevitably encounter ubiquitous clapboard Congregational meetinghouses. These places of worship crown the town greens of villages throughout the region. Their faith, the faith of the Puritan pilgrims, is a foundational element of the American ethos. Theirs is the faith of the first Thanksgiving, of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” of the Salem witch trials, and of the heart and soul of the First Amendment: the freedom of religion (though most of the early Puritans came to the shores British North America seeking religious freedom for themselves, not for others). Puritan Congregationalism has shaped the contours of American civic and religious life for hundreds of years.

On this last day of Women’s History Month we would like to explore President Coolidge’s views on women’s suffrage. President Coolidge’s thirty-year political career began at the height of the women’s suffrage movement. Many states had already given women the franchise in the years leading up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, but nonetheless the issue was deeply fraught at the time. President Coolidge considered suffrage very closely, and concluded that women possess all the faculties necessary to be equal participants in our nation’s democracy. Thus, he was an early and enthusiastic supporter of women’s right to vote.