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05/25/2022 08:36 AMWhat do Boston Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski and constitutional scholar Akhil Amar have in common? They are both triple crown winners, although admittedly they won different triple crowns. Yaz’s achievement was in baseball; Amar’s was in academia, winning Yale University’s unofficial triple crown: the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar, one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the United States, will speak on Thursdays, June 2 and 9, as part of the Essex Library’s three-part program on the United States Constitution. The programs will be held in Essex Town Hall.
The first presentation, on Thursday, May 26, by author and editor Sam Tanenhaus will cover the Constitution today. Amar’s programs on June 2 and 9 will cover the Constitution’s past and its future.
Amar has written widely on the Constitution, including his most recent book, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation 1760-1840. His explanation of how to write a volume of 832 pages is good advice for anyone contemplating authorship of a book.
“You take a big thing and break it down into pieces,” he says.
He broke his subject down into 12 chapters and then divided each chapter into five sections. Then, he points out, “each section was a term paper and I know how to write a term paper.”
His influences in writing are wide ranging. He cited Paul McCartney’s 15-minute medley on the B side of Abbey Road for its smooth transitions from song to song and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fast-paced and pointed Hamilton lyrics, “snippets that segue together,” as examples of how he connects ideas.
A family trip to Philadelphia when he was 10 years old began Amar’s fascination with the Constitution.
“I was inspired,” he said. “I am grateful to be an American.”
Amar’s parents, who met in this country when they were medical students, were originally from Lahore, then in India, now a city in Pakistan.
Amar described Alexander Hamilton, one of the six men he identifies as most responsible for the United States Constitution, as “America’s greatest immigrant.” Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, then a British possession.
Of the five other key contributors at the Constitutional Convention in 1787—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin—Amar says that Washington was preeminent.
“Without George Washington, there is no America,” he says.
It was his ability to listen that made Washington different. Amar calls him the “listener in chief.”
Slavery, Amar said, was the issue the drafters of the Constitution got most deplorably wrong.
“They did not put slavery on the path to ultimate extinction,” he said. “The framers got much right but not slavery.”
He credits the citizens of the early American republic with being the stimulus behind the other important element the Constitutional Framers did not deal with: the Bill of Rights.
“The ordinary people said, ‘Let’s add that one.’ That’s really impressive,” he said.
Amar, who grew up in California, came from a family that has produced not one legal scholar but two. His brother Vikram is dean of the University of Illinois Law School. His youngest brother Arun is a neurosurgeon. All three have first names representing their Indian heritage and American middle names: Akhil Reed, Vikram David, and Arun Paul.
Over the years at Yale where he has taught since 1985, four of Amar’s students have become United States senators, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Chris Coons of Delaware, and Josh Hawley of Missouri. Other former students include Jake Sullivan, now national security advisor and Neil Katyal, a regular on MSNBC, who was acting solicitor general of the United States in the Obama Administration.
He credits Katyal with introducing him to the people to whom he dedicates his current book, a list that shows the wide range of his acquaintances: Playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and his wife Vanessa Nadal, an attorney; biographer Ron Chernow; and Khizr Khan, the Pakistan-born American attorney who memorably pulled out a pocket copy of the Constitution addressing the 2016 Democratic Convention.
“Khizr Kahn stole my move,” Amar said.
Amar, who always carries a pocket copy of the Constitution, said once Stephen Colbert took his copy during his appearance on Colbert’s television program. Still, Amar has something to show for that appearance: a blue and white mug with Colbert’s name on it resting in a bookcase.
The bookcase has not only law, history, and serious non-fiction but also an American classic of another sort, The Annotated Godfather, which Amar showed a visitor.
He has two more volumes of planned after The Words That Made Us. Amar says the next book, The Words That Made Us Equal, will cover the period from 1840 to 1920, and the last volume, The Words that Made Us Modern, on the period from 1920 to 2000.
Amar and his wife, Vinita Parkash, a physician, divide their time between Woodbridge and a house in Guilford that Amar designed himself. The couple have three children, now in their 20s. Wherever Amar is, he is busy writing, speaking and teaching.
“I love life every day,” he said. “I read, write, talk, think, and listen.”
The Constitution: A Three-Part Conversation sponsored by the Essex Library runs on Thursdays, May 26 and June 2 and 9 at 7 p.m. at Essex Town Hall, 29 West Avenue. The program is free and but registration is required; to register, ontact the Essex Library at 860-767-1560 or email staff.essexlib@gmail.com.