Dr. David Sehat, author of “The Myth of American Religious Freedom” and “The Jefferson Rule: How Our Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible,” will be at Tarleton State University tonight to discuss the evolution of the Republican Party from the 1980s to the present day.

This event will mark as the third installment of the Annual Speaker Series, organized by Tarleton’s College of Liberal and Fine Arts and Dr. Michael Landis, Assistant Professor of History.

Landis helped start this series two years ago because he recognized that “There wasn’t an annual thing that dealt with current events in the news right now.”

His aim is to bring someone to campus that is an expert in a field pertaining to a pressing issue in current events.

Unlike most guest speaker events, this annual series heavily encourages participation. The first speaker series discussed the politics of education. Landis described the first annual series as having a great turnout of people that care and had a lot of passion about the topic. The students and faculty at the event that year discussed the fight for the funding of education, how the political parties in particular fight for education and textbooks, why they’re written the way they are.

Last year’s speaker spoke on the criminal justice system and race during a time when racial tensions were high and the Black Lives Matter movement was the big story in the news.

This year, one of the most divisive subjects in politics is President Donald Trump.

“Love him or hate him, we’ve got to confront him,” Landis said. He went on to say that Sehat will not center his talk around Trump himself or his policies, but where he fits in the history of the Republican Party.
Landis suspects that since Sehat is an expert in intellectual and American history, then he will focus on how our Republican Party has progressed in ideological patterns. Landis said he hopes to “Talk about Trump, without talking about Trump,” and that “If there’s one guy that can do it, it’s Dr. Sehat.”

Sehat, a professor of intellectual history and American history at Georgia State University, wrote the two aforementioned books, the former about the idea of religious freedom, where it came from, and if it’s real or not. The latter is about how people throughout American history have used the founding father to push an agenda. He also has a podcast on iTunes called MindPop where he interviews an expert on different kinds of topics.

This will be a chance for students, faculty and people of Stephenville to interact with an expert on what brought the Republican Party is today and how it got there. Landis insists participation and passion.

“Come and participate. This is American History. This is ours regardless of how you feel about it,” Landis said.

Sehat will begin the seminar at 4:30 p.m. in Room 118 of the O.A. Grant Building and is scheduled to run until 6 p.m. with a book signing afterwards.