The Abigail Adams Institute is a conservative-leaning education nonprofit that provides academic programming for Harvard and other Boston-area university students as well as young professionals in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. ¹ It is named for the former first lady Abigail Adams, a Massachusetts native. ²

Background

The Abigail Adams Institute was founded in 2014, located at Harvard Square, and says it seeks to provide a “supplemental humanistic education to the Harvard intellectual community.” ³

The institute provides academic programming for Harvard University and other Boston-area university students as well as young professionals in Cambridge and Boston. ⁴ The institute provides resources for student organizations about matters it considers neglected in modern research universities. ⁵

Princeton professor Robert George, who lectures at the institute, notes the institute is not just a counterbalance to left-leaning campuses and is open to all political views. But, he said, it does offer right-leaning students a place to supplement their education. ⁶

The institute holds seminars, workshops, lectures, reading groups, intellectual retreats, and mentoring. Its weekly reading group is called “The Great Conversation: How Should We Live. ” It says it explores the “foundational texts from Homer to Augustine.” ⁷

One example of a seminar was in In April 2021 when the Abigail Adams Institute hosted a debate about the preferable economic system between University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor Richard Wolff and Harvard lecturer Arthur Brooks, the former president of the American Enterprise Institute. ⁸

The institute was named for America’s second first lady, Abigail Adams, a Massachusetts native who was both the wife and the mother of U.S. presidents. The institute honors her for letters to her husband that show she had a role in the founding of the United States and was an advocate for women’s rights and an opponent of slavery. ⁹

Leadership

Danilo Petranovich is the director of the Abigail Adams Institute. He previously taught political science at Duke University and Yale University. ¹⁰

Emma Towne is the director of operations for the Abigail Adams Institute. She is a graduate of Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in May 2019. ¹¹

James Capuzzi is the director of marketing and communications for the Abigail Adams Institute. He graduated from Tulane University and then completed a master’s degree at the American University of Rome. ¹²

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