Hi, I'm Jeff Sickinga, Executive Director of the Ashbrook Center, and this is The American Idea, coming to you from Peter Schramm's Library in Ashland, Ohio.

I want to welcome everybody to this episode of The American Idea.

I'm Jeff Sikkinga, executive director of the Ashbrook Center and, of course, host for this conversation today.

Today we're going to be talking about one of the defining moments in American history, in the meaning of this country, and our

understanding of the American idea, and that is the Constitutional Convention of 1787,

that gave birth to the document that still governs us to this day, the United States Constitution.

To talk about that really apocal moment in American history and world history are two old friends of the Ashbrook Center.

First, Gordon Lloyd. Gordon is Doxan Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine

University and a senior fellow here at Ashbrook. He earned his MA and Ph.D. in government from

Claremont Graduate School. He is an immigrant to the United States from the West Indies, from Trinidad and Tobago,

and has an immigrant's love for this country and a deep desire to not only understand this country,

but share that understanding with his fellow Americans.

And he's done that in lots of ways, one of which has been teaching for many, many years

in Pepperdine's wonderful School of Public Policy Program,

also teaching for Ashbrook in our teaching American history seminars and our Master of Arts in American History and Government,

and of course by publishing widely on America, American History, and the American founding.

He's written books and articles on the founding, on political economy, and public policy.

He currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Walter and Lenore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Gordon is, without question, one of the leading experts

on the Constitutional Convention.

He spent many decades studying this,

thinking deeply about the convention

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