This summer, the United States of America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a milestone that is being celebrated across the country with events, service opportunities, and more. As Tyson Reeder, an assistant professor in BYU’s History Department and affiliated faculty for American Studies at the Kennedy Center, pondered how to commemorate America250, he came up with an ambitious plan: a course on the Declaration of Independence that would culminate in a visit to important American history sites in the eastern US.
Reeder has dedicated his career to studying American history; his dissertation during his PhD program at UC Davis focused on US relations with the Portuguese Empire during the Age of Revolution. After that, he was hired as faculty at the University of Virginia, working as an editor for the papers of James Madison. Though his focus was on Madison’s foreign relations, he says, “you can't help but get wrapped up into politics and constitutionalism and so forth—he's known as the father of the US Constitution—so my scholarship evolved into constitutional and political history as well.” His 2024 book Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison's America was awarded the 2025 George Washington Prize, which recognizes the best works about America’s founding. “It’s the signature prize for my field,” Reeder says. “The list of people who have won the award is very, very impressive, so to have my name listed among that group was a real honor.”
He began working at BYU in 2023 and was quickly recruited by Jamin Rowan to be affiliated faculty for the Kennedy Center’s American Studies program; he teaches a class on US Constitutional history that is taken by American Studies students on the Constitution & Democracy in the World track. And in winter semester 2026, he added a new course that can count toward an American Studies degree: History 390, The Declaration of Independence, in honor of America250.
A Deep Dive into the Declaration
For this important commemorative year, he wanted to do something special in addition to in-class lectures: to take the students back east to see the Declaration itself and important historical sites connected to it.
His goal was for this experience to be free of cost to the students, which meant finding funding from other sources. Much of the funding came from the Wheatley Institute at BYU, which aims to “[strengthen] society through research-supported work that fortifies the core institutions of family, religion, and constitutional government.” Some funding came from the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences, and the rest came from the American Studies program. Together, the three groups contributed enough funding that even the students’ food was paid for.
Because this would be such a meaningful (and pricey) endeavor, Reeder wanted to specifically recruit students who, in his words, “were really going to sink their teeth into it—to really learn and think deeply about the material.” So, together, the sponsoring institutions sought out the best and brightest for the class: “The Wheatley Institute recommended some of their Wheatley Scholars,” Reeder says. “American Studies chose a couple of their brightest students. And in History, I worked with a couple professors to identify some of our top students that we thought would fit best for the class.”
In the end, seventeen students joined the class and spent the winter 2026 semester diving deep into the Declaration of Independence, including two students sponsored by American Studies, plus a third American Studies student who was a Wheatley Scholar. Reeder explains, “We started with early British ideas about liberty and monarchy and walked students through different events in British history that influenced how people thought about monarchy. We went through different philosophers of the Enlightenment to talk about the principles that underlay the Declaration of Independence. Then we jumped into the process of US independence: what that looked like, what issues were at stake, how Americans thought about their independence.”
Finally, the class moved to the Declaration of Independence itself: “We spent several weeks just analyzing the drafting of the document, the words of the document. We systematically went through every line of the Declaration of Independence and picked it apart: how Americans would have understood the line at that time. And then from there, we talked about the evolution of the Declaration's meaning and how it evolved from just a declaration of independence—a very utilitarian document saying ‘We're not part of Britain anymore’—to become one of the founding documents of the nation.”
Finally, in early April, it was time for the students to travel to the East Coast and experience what they’d spent the semester learning about. With the help of his wife Karen, Reeder led the students on an eight-day trip to some of the most important sites connected to the Declaration of Independence.
First stop: Monticello, the Virginia residence of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration. As they toured the home and plantation, they talked about Jefferson and contrasted the ideals in the Declaration of Independence with the practice of slavery. The group also toured the University of Virginia, which was founded by Jefferson.
After that, they drove up to Washington, DC, for one of the crowning moments of the tour: seeing the Declaration of Independence in person, displayed in the National Archives rotunda (which also displays the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights). They also visited other important monuments and memorials and were given a tour of the US Capitol Building by the staff of John Curtis, US Senator for Utah. “As we toured the monuments, though,” Reeder says, “our focus continued to be the Declaration of Independence: what did the building of these monuments tell us about how people were thinking about the principles of the Declaration of Independence at the time?”
After DC, they traveled to Philadelphia, where they visited the National Constitution Center and Independence Hall. They returned to DC, where they capped off the trip by going to the Martin Luther King Jr. Monument and listening to his “I Have a Dream” speech. Reeder explains, “We talked about the ways that he referenced the Declaration of Independence, and how the Declaration of Independence has evolved with each age—how different people have made different uses of the Declaration. We talked about our continued engagement with the Declaration of Independence and how we can make its meaning something that we can use to improve the nation: to continue the positive legacies that have been handed to us and improve on areas that need to be improved on.”
Finding Meaning in the Founding
Though the trip was a one-time event, Reeder hopes to continue to offer the class in the future and to continue to give students the opportunity to dive deep into the birth of the United States. “The Founding is incredibly important,” he says, “because, as the word ‘founding’ implies, it provides a foundation. The United States is unique in that the Founding of the United States creates a nation: the nation doesn't evolve, the nation doesn't materialize—the nation is actually created. And that's very unique in world history to just decide to create a nation. That Founding period tells us a lot about why we have ideals that we have, why we have struggles that we have.”
In all his classes, he says, “my overarching goal is for students to learn the really complex ways that humans interact, and then be able to distill that complexity, to harmonize it with the simplicity of the gospel in ways that help us improve lives for Heavenly Father's children.”
The Declaration of Independence class had a similar goal: to understand the Declaration’s complexity and then find meaning in it. Reeder wanted his students to “understand how people have used the Declaration of Independence to further a variety of agendas, and then to take that and make meaning of it for ourselves. What do we want the message of the Declaration to be to us?”
He culminated the course with a challenge to his students. “We have the famous trifecta in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Its meaning has evolved over time, and I encouraged my students that they can continue to make the Declaration meaningful to them—to choose to live the life of a disciple of Christ; to pursue, as Paul said in Galatians 5, ‘the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free’ through the atonement; and to pursue the happiness that's inherent in the gospel.”