Lecture Date: March 17, 2026
The Roxanne M. Kaufman Lecture
John Hancock may be best remembered for his large, flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence—if, that is, he is remembered at all. Hancock’s many contributions to the revolutionary cause included using much of his significant fortune, earned as the head of Boston’s leading mercantile concern, to finance the military. Noted for his generosity, he was the moderate among more radical revolutionaries. The longest-serving president of the Continental Congress, he also helped push the Constitution through to ratification after helping offset contending state interests in the fight over the Articles of Confederation. A Federalist but also a pragmatist, Hancock championed nine “Conciliatory Amendments” that led to the Bill of Rights, to which he added the 10th, which reserved to the states any “powers not expressly delegated to Congress.” As well, apart from serving as a well-liked twelve-term governor of Massachusetts, Hancock, with an eye on the larger U.S. economy, helped restore postwar trade with Britain.
Speaker: Willard Sterne Randall
Author or co-author of fifteen books including six Founding Fathers biographies, Randall first was an award-winning journalist. After a successful seventeen-year career as a feature writer for the Philadelphia Bulletin, magazine writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, investigative journalist for Philadelphia Magazine, and stringer for Time-Life News Service, Willard Sterne Randall pursued advanced studies in history at Princeton University. Biographer of Benjamin and William Franklin, of Benedict Arnold, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Ethan Allen, he has co-authored collections of biographies and e-books with his wife, literary scholar and prize-winning poet Nancy Nahra. As a journalist, Randall won the National Magazine Award for Public Service from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the Standard Gravure Award, the Hillman Prize, the Loeb Award and the John Hancock Prize. His Benedict Arnold biography received four national awards and was a New York Times Notable Book. Publishers Weekly chose his biography of Jefferson as one of the ten best biographies of 1993. Randall taught American history at John Cabot University in Rome and at the University of Vermont and Champlain College, where he was a Distinguished Scholar in History and is a Professor Emeritus.