Videos | Religious Freedom

All Possess Alike Liberty of Conscience: Guarding Our Heritage of Religious Freedom

October 7, 2026

On September 24, 2026, ACTA and the School of Civic Leadership at UT-Austin hosted a keynote address by Vincent Phillip Muñoz, Tocqueville Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. The keynote was followed by a panel and Q&A session that explored how America’s tradition of religious liberty and freedom of conscience emerged from the nation’s constitutional heritage and why a deeper understanding of these principles remains essential to civic education today.

Panelists included Vincent Philip Muñoz, Tocqueville Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame; Wilfred M. McClay, Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization, Hillsdale College; Cara Rogers Stevens, Associate Professor of History, Ashland University; and Steven T. Collis, Esq., Clinical Professor, Director of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center and the Law & Region Clinic, The University of Texas School of Law at Austin.

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PodcastsReligious Freedom

Vincent Phillip Muñoz: Faith and Free Speech

On this episode of Higher Ed Now Civics Edition, ACTA President Michael Poliakoff speaks with Vincent Phillip Muñoz, the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame as well as the Founding Director of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government. Professor Muñoz is also the author of the 2022 book, Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion. The lively conversation covers the conflicts over religion that shook the Founders, separation of church and state, and the perils of student self-censorship in today’s academy.

PodcastsCivic Education

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On this episode of Higher Ed Now Civics Edition, ACTA President Michael Poliakoff moderates a bracing and illuminating conversation with Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and former U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Executive-in-Residence in Duke’s University’s Political Science Department and Distinguished Lecturing Fellow at the university’s Center for Politics John Hillen on what makes America exceptional in history and among all nations even today and how exposure to all its intricacies will help create the next generation of informed patriots. Both are members of ACTA’s National Commission on American History and Civic Education and contributors to an upcoming volume of essays on what every college student should know about American history.
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