America at 250: The Power of Words – Rethinking the Declaration of Independence and the Fourteenth Amendment 2026

Cathleen D. Cahill is the Walter L. Ferree and Helen P. Ferree Professor in Middle-American History at Penn State University. She is a social historian who explores the everyday experiences of ordinary people, primarily women. She focuses on women’s working and political lives, asking how identities such as race, nationality, class, and age have shaped them. She is also interested in the connections generated by women’s movements for work, play, and politics, and how mapping those movements reveal women in surprising and unexpected places. Her first book, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1932 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), won the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award and was a finalist for the David J. Weber and Bill Clements Book Prize. Her most recent book, Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), received honorable mention for the President’s Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. She has published numerous articles and essays and is co-editor of Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022). She is currently coauthoring a graphic history on the life of New York Suffragist Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee. She is also working on “Is New Mexico going to line up with Texas?”: African American Women and the Election of 1920 in the American West,” which uses a 1921 New Mexican court case contesting voter participation to explore Black women’s efforts to exercise their right to vote in the US West after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Dr. Cahill has spoken at many venues including the Library of Congress and the National Portrait Gallery and for the National Park Service. Her work has been excerpted in Ms. Magazine, Time, and the New York Times. She is an Organization of American Historians Distinguished lecturer and the Vice President/President Elect of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. She also co-hosts the Society’s podcast.

andré douglas pond cummings is Dean and Professor of Law at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School having begun his deanship in June 2024. He was formerly Associate Dean for Faculty Development and the Charles C. Baum Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law where he taught Business Associations, Contracts I and II, Corporate Justice, Entertainment Law, Policing & the Use of Force, Progressive Prosecution, and Hip Hop & the American Constitution. Dean cummings was also Co-Founder and Co-Director of Bowen Law’s Center for Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform. Dean cummings was previously a Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law and has been a Visiting Professor at numerous law schools. Before embarking on his academic career, cummings worked as a judicial law clerk for Chief Judge Joseph W. Hatchett of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and for Chief Justice Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court. In addition, he practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago IL, focusing his practice on complex business transactions including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and securities offerings of publicly traded companies. Simultaneously, cummings represented clients in the sports and entertainment industries, including athletes in the National Football League and Professional Bull Riders, record labels, motion picture production companies, and a variety of authors, including Hollywood screenwriters. Dean cummings has written extensively on issues regarding investor protection, racial and social justice, and sports and entertainment law, publishing in the Washington University Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Utah Law Review, Tulane Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Howard Law Journal, Thurgood Marshall Law Review and Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice, amongst many others. cummings has published three books including Corporate Justice (with Todd Clark) in 2016, Hip Hop and the Law (with Pamela Bridgewater and Donald Tibbs) in 2015, and Reversing Field: Examining Commercialization, Labor, Gender, and Race in 21st Century Sports Law (with Anne Marie Lofaso) in 2010. cummings is currently working on his fourth book, Ending the Racialized War on Drugs: Repairing Victimized Communities (with Steven Ramirez), to be published by the Cambridge University Press in 2025. Noted public intellectual Cornel West has stated that cummings’ scholarly “reputation goes far beyond the nation, and is heard in every corner of the globe, wrestling with legacies of legal thinking on one hand and popular culture on the other.” cummings has been recognized as Professor of the Year on numerous occasions including the University-wide Distinguished Professor Award by the West Virginia University Foundation. He has recently received three Faculty Excellence Awards at the William H. Bowen School of Law including in Social Justice, Research & Scholarship, and Public Service. cummings has taught as a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Syracuse University College of Law, The University of Illinois—Chicago Law School, Temple University Beasley School of Law (Tokyo Campus) and has taught as a Visiting Lecturer at the North Carolina Central University School of Law, St. Thomas University School of Law, Fundação Getulio Vargas, Direito Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Universidade de Vila Velha in Vila Velha, Brazil, and Universidad de Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico. cummings holds a JD from Howard University School of Law where he graduated cum laude.

Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz is a Professor of History and Director of Penn State University’s Latino/a Studies where he teaches courses in Latino studies, urban history, spatial theory, sociability, and immigration. He is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar and a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians. He has received fellowships from Princeton University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the New-York Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Huntington Library, and the Harvard Business School. He received his B.A. in History, Columbia University, 1992, his M.A. in History, University of Chicago, 1997 and his Ph.D. in History, University of Chicago, 2002.

Aaron Martin is a shareholder in the Harrisburg firm of Mette, Evans & Woodside where he maintains a statewide trial and appellate practice that includes the litigation of cases involving civil rights and constitutional law. His notable cases include Marcavage v. Rendell, establishing that an amendment to Pennsylvania’s Ethnic Intimidation statute violated Article III of the Pennsylvania Constitution, Stilp v. Contino, holding that a secrecy provision in the Public Official and Employee Ethics Act violated the First Amendment, Schrader v. Sunday, holding that a provision in the Child Protective Services Law violated the First Amendment, and Doe v. Schorn, declaring a criminal sanction in Pennsylvania’s Educator Discipline Act unconstitutional. He is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law.

Cate Mellen, CFRE has been in non-profit service in South Central Pennsylvania for nearly two decades in a variety of roles including fund development, community relations and public advocacy, and now serves as the executive director of a human services organization. She is also a member of Carlisle Borough Council, having been appointed to fill a vacancy in January 2022 and then elected to a four-year term in November 2023. As Council Member, she serves on the Public Safety Committee and as the chair of the Public Works Committee. She is a 1994 graduate of Dickinson College, and received an M.A in Art History from Syracuse University in 1998 and an M.A in History from Cornell University in 2001. In 2023, Cate earned her Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) certification, an internationally recognized credential awarded to those who demonstrate the knowledge, skills and commitment to the highest standards of ethical and professional practice in fundraising.

Jim Griffith is a Business Consulting Associate Director at NTT DATA, where he provides strategic technology advisory services to State Health and Human Services agencies. He brings more than 30 years of experience in government information technology, and is a lifelong Central Pennsylvania resident. At NTT DATA, Jim also facilitates internal Inclusion and Belonging initiatives and AI literacy and upskilling efforts. He serves on the executive board of the Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania and co facilitates its AI Peer Learning Group. Jim is also a Senior Systems Designer with the Penn State Dickinson School of Law Antiracist Development Institute (ADI), and has participated with the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) as a research group member responsible for updates to CAIDP’s annual AI and Democratic Values Index, a comprehensive assessment of AI policy across more than 80 countries. As a non-attorney panelist, Jim brings a practical perspective on how the power of language, law, and technology shapes access, equity, and public trust.

Danielle M. Conway is the Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State School of International Affairs. She is currently serving a one-year term as President of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) for 2026. A leading expert in procurement law, entrepreneurship, and intellectual property law, Dean Conway joined Dickinson Law after serving for four years as dean of the University of Maine School of Law and 14 years on the faculty of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, William S. Richardson School of Law. Dean Conway’s scholarly agenda and speeches have focused on, among other areas, advocating for public education and for actualizing the rights of marginalized groups and promoting systemic equity in legal education and the profession. Under her leadership, Dickinson Law’s Antiracist Development Institute (ADI) was created to facilitate the dismantling of structures that scaffold systemic racial inequality by using a systems design approach focused on implementing antiracist practices, processes, and policies throughout organizations. Dean Conway is the co-recipient of the inaugural AALS Impact Award, which recognized her work in co-curating the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project, a webpage for law deans, faculty, and the public that contains resources and information related to addressing systemic racism in law and legal education. Dean Conway is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a member of the AALS Executive Committee, and a director of the AccessLex Institute. She is also a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, retiring in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.