How does a nation with deep differences hold together?

Yuval Levin, SPA/BA ’99, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said it’s not just a contemporary question.

“It’s actually a permanent problem in American political life,” Levin said April 23 during the final Perspectives on the Civic Life Presidential Speaker Series event of the semester. “The framers were very worried about the breakdown of cohesion and unity in the new republic.”

Levin returned to his alma mater last week for a fireside chat with American University president Jon Alger about his 2024 book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again.

Levin said the foundational document provided answers to big challenges in the 1780s and in our own time, too.

“The Constitution establishes institutions that are intended to allow us to act together when we don’t think alike. It is there to let us work through disagreement,” he said. “That’s not how we tend to think about the Constitution now because we often think about it in a lawyerly way. We think of it as law, and it is intended to allow us to make more laws, but it is also a framework for national cohesion that we shouldn’t underestimate.” 

During their conversation, Alger and the conservative political analyst also discussed his love for wonky Washington, working full-time on Capitol Hill while he was an AU student, and why he’s hopeful about the future of our country.

“Every generation of Americans has had to deal with very serious problems that have felt like existential problems. One of the characteristic things about our society is that we always think we’re on the brink of total collapse,” Levin said. “Americans have thought this from the minute the Constitutional Convention ended—that this system is about to fall apart. It’s been 235 years with the Constitution, and it’s still here.”

Levin urged the crowd gathered at McDowell Formal Lounge to find inspiration in the Constitution and see that deep frustration on both sides of the aisle is an opportunity to act together.

“It’s not hard to find the problems that need your attention. It’s hard to find the will to take them up,” Levin said. “And I think that’s really the challenge for all of us, wherever we find ourselves in American life.”