HESBURGH LECTURE SERIES 2012 Program - Alumni Association ...

Vincent Phillip Muñoz, Ph.D.
Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion and Public Life, Political
Science; Concurrent Associate Professor, Law
Biography
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion and Public Life in the
Department of Political Science, and concurrent associate professor of law at the University
of Notre Dame. Before joining the Notre Dame faculty in 2009, he was the William E. Simon
Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life at Princeton University.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and
political philosophy. His recent research has focused on the themes of religious liberty and
the American Constitution, His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and
Jefferson was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
Currently Muñoz is completing a second book that focuses on the original meaning of the
Constitution’s religion clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in the Harvard Journal
of Law and Public Policy and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. Muñoz also has published articles in
the American Political Science Review, The Review of Politics, The Wall Street Journal, and The Claremont Review of Books. His
media appearances include commentary on Voice of America Radio, Fox News Channel, and Turkish Public Television. In 2004,
he testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the matter of Hostility to Religious Expression in the Public Square.
Muñoz earned a Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School, a M.A. from Boston College, and a B.A. from Claremont McKenna
College.
Lecture
Categories
Church, Government, Law
Did the Founding Fathers Intend to Separate Church from State?
Is “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional? Do Christmas displays in the public square violate the First
Amendment? For over 60 years, church-state questions like these have been at the center of the nation’s culture wars. This lecture
explores the history of the American founding and the political thought of the Founding Fathers to explain the founders’ visions
about the proper relationship between church and state.
The Hesburgh Lecture Series, 2012 Program 75