USC Price School sponsors, for ninth consecutive year, the George Washington Leadership Lecture Series at Mount Vernon
By Greg Hardesty
Former Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf’s favorite movie is “A Man for All Seasons.”
That should come as no surprise.
Wolf, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years, reveres the Academy Award-winning 1966 historical drama about Sir Thomas More, counselor to King Henry VIII and a devout Catholic whose decision to stand by his religious principles cost him his life.
More, the ultimate man of conscience, would likely have been a big fan of another statesman: President George Washington. The first president of the United States repeatedly emphasized that religious liberty was not just a blessing, but a right—an idea later enshrined in the First Amendment of The Bill of Rights.
So, it was fitting that Wolf was the key speaker at the ninth-annual George Washington Leadership Lecture Series at Mount Vernon,an event sponsored by the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington.
“George Washington and the Pursuit of Religious Freedom” was the topic of this year’s Oct. 13 lecture. The series was established through a gift by Maribeth Borthwick (’73), vice regent for California of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, the non-profit that preserves and maintains the Mount Vernon estate originally owned by Washington’s family.
The lecture was moderated, as it has been every year, by USC Price School Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis David Sloane. (Full set of images from the event here.)
The event also included the premiere of the new short educational film, “George Washington and the Pursuit of Religious Freedom,” one of a series of movies Mount Vernon produces for teachers to explain complicated topics to students.
Speaking out for religious liberty
Examples abound today of continued persecution of people based on their faiths.
Combating this persecution has been the life mission of Wolf, the author of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), which infused religious freedom into U.S. foreign policy.
Wolf also authored legislation to create a special envoy at the U.S. State Department to advocate for religious minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia and is a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
“I think the U.S. must speak out – we need to be bold,” Wolf said during a Q&A with Sloane during which he detailed international hot spots of religious persecution, including China, Nigeria, and Egypt.
“Every faith group in China is being persecuted,” Wolf said. “I think America always needs to be speaking out.”
He also singled out Iran as a threat to religious freedom and mentioned the recent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police officers for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely. She died in custody.
Key trips to Mount Vernon and abroad
Wolf recalled his first trip to Mount Vernon in 1955 as a high school student.
He had barely been out of the country when he was elected to Congress in 1981, but visits to Ethiopia during its famine and Romania, where Jews and Catholics were being persecuted, were eye opening.
“Those two things changed my whole thrust and mind,” Wolf said.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is a bipartisan panel that works effectively as a watchdog for religious freedom around the world, Wolf noted.
Its function, he explained, is to be a “truth teller”—not unlike Washington himself.
The update in 2016 of the International Religious Freedom legislation was named the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, which was passed unanimously.
After Wolf ended his tenure in Congress in January 2015, he was appointed the first-ever Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor University. That same month he joined the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a newly created religious freedom group, from which he retired in September 2018 as distinguished senior fellow.
Executive Director of the Fred W. Smith National Library. (Photo by Dave Scavone)
A valuable lecture series
“We particularly value this lecture series because it brings together two very seemingly opposing things and makes them complementary,” said Sloane, the event moderator and USC School professor. “You have George Washington, the famous iconic figure in American history, and you have a public policy school founded in 1929 that is concerned about today’s contemporary world.”
“This lecture series,” he added, “has been from its beginning the attempt to try and understand contemporary public policy issues through the lens of the life and accomplishments of George Washington.”