2025 Weeden Lecture Deconstructs the “Pursuit of Happiness”

Over the past 26 years, Lawrenceville’s Weeden Lecture Series has hosted some of the most prominent names in U.S. national conversations about history. This year’s speaker, Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and host of the We the People podcast, offered a timely perspective on a key tenet of the American story.

Rosen said his latest book, “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America,” grew out of a life-altering reading project he undertook during the Covid pandemic. In reading Ben Franklin’s autobiography, he discovered the degree of influence the writings of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers had on the way our nation’s founders thought about “happiness.”

For the founders, happiness was to be found in moral perfection and living a virtuous life, as expressed through a continuous quest for self-improvement through industriousness, prudence, and justice. What was most personally significant for Rosen was their lifelong dedication to the daily habit of deep reading as a path to becoming their best selves.

In this context, Rosen repeatedly praised the role of Lawrenceville’s teachers, the dialogue format of Harkness learning, and the importance of reading books versus magazines, web articles, and social posts. He spoke of incorporating the daily routine of reading books into his own life.

“It’s all about habits, just doing it every day,” said Rosen. “You are so fortunate to be building this habit at Lawrenceville. It’s a superpower.”

Rosen did acknowledge a glaring failure in the founders’ quest for virtue – the owning of slaves. “Jefferson and the others were hypocrites in this regard,” he said. “Jefferson (in particular) was addicted to luxurious living.”

Still, Rosen believes the continuing success of our democracy hinges on individuals being readers. “These are very serious times for American democracy,” he said. “The stakes are very high.”

Rosen spoke for an hour, walking the stage in Kirby Arts Center without notes, sharing anecdotes about Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John and Abigail Adams, James Madison, and John Quincy Adams, and their Greek, Roman, and Biblical influences. He closed by sharing a quote from Deuteronomy by way of John Quincy Adams, urging humanity to follow the ways of righteousness and to pass these lessons to their children.

A professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, Rosen is also the author of “Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law,” a New York Times bestseller, and biographies of Louis Brandeis and William Howard Taft. He has written frequently about the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The Weeden Lecture Series was established in 1999 by Walter Buckley ’56 and honors the legacy of History Master Chuck Weeden. The Series is coordinated by history teacher Clare Grieve. 

 If you would like to watch the lecture in its entirety, you can view it here.

 For more information, contact Lisa M. Gillard H'17, director of public relations, at lgillard@lawrenceville.org.