Our Principles

The Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS) is a non-partisan, not-for-profit, national organization that seeks to identify, educate, and launch young men and women into foreign policy and national security careers imbued with the Hamiltonian perspective of strong and principled American leadership in global affairs. Hamiltonians are united by a deep conviction, rooted in the history of the last century, that the world is a better, safer, and more prosperous place when the United States is willing and able to lead. Engaging citizens from all walks of life and at every stage in their careers, AHS seeds the ground for the future of American foreign policy.

Our members—on 60 campuses, as well as in Miami, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC—are united by basic convictions about the United States and its role in the world.

An appreciation that the world remains a dangerous place in which our power must be exercised with prudence, and where the primary threats to our security come from states that deny freedom to their own people and from non-state actors who embrace hatred and violence;

A conviction, rooted in the history of the last century, that the world is a better, safer, and more prosperous place when the United States is willing and able to lead; and a commitment to maintaining the moral authority and material strength on which that leadership rests;

A measured pride in the success of the American experiment; an understanding that America’s greatness is the result of its commitment to individual liberty, limited government, economic freedom, the rule of law, human dignity, and democracy; and a belief that the fundamental aim of every aspect of our policy, foreign and domestic, must be to defend these principles at home and ultimately to encourage their spread abroad;

A clear recognition that, in such a world, our true friends and reliable partners are other democratic nations with whom we share an enduring commonality of values, and not simply a temporary convergence of interests;

A firm belief that, time and again, in peace and in war, the ability of the American political system to profit from vigorous public discussion has proved its worth; and that, at this moment in our history, our public discussion of foreign, economic, and national security policy stands very much in need of renewal.

Founded in March 2010 by Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University, Daniel Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute, and Roy Katzovicz of Saddle Point Group LLC, AHS is the farm system for future American leaders, forging in them a new national consensus on principled American primacy. Our campus chapters serve as an entrée into a deep professional network and lifelong work in helping America confront the many challenges it faces abroad.

The Alexander Hamilton Society currently has over 60 chapters on college campuses across the country, in addition to professional chapters in New York City and Washington, D.C. In our first nine years alone, we have sponsored over 1,300 events, with over 58,000 attending. Our impressive alumni already serve in key positions in think-tanks and Congressional offices, and have received numerous prestigious scholarships such as the Rhodes, Truman, Boren, Schwarzman, and Public Interest fellowships.

The Alexander Hamilton Society was founded to confront our foreign, economic, and security policy failures at their source—American universities—and to provide our students with experience they would otherwise not gain, in all the fields from which they will influence U.S. policy. We firmly believe AHS is responding not merely to demand for a useful program, but also to a genuine need of our country—the need to inspire a new generation with sound convictions about America and its place in the world.

"...[W]e are faced with universities where the conversations have become narrower and narrower, the thinking and writing are diluted, and a deep understanding of the past is being lost. To me, that sums up why the Hamilton Society is so important. We are investing in students so that ten or twenty years from now, we will look back and see that many of the nation’s leaders got their start in a chapter of the Hamilton Society."

- Roger Hertog

Board of Directors

Dan Blumenthal

American Enterprise Institute

Co-Founder & Secretary

Aaron Friedberg

Princeton University

Co-Founder & President

Paul V. Lettow

Jones Day

David McCormick

Bridgewater Associates, LP

Roy Katzovicz

Saddle Point Management, LP

Co-Founder & Chairman

Arvind Sanger

Geosphere Capital Management, LLC

Laurence Zuriff

Xometry

Treasurer

Roger Hertog

Hertog Foundation

Board Member Emeritus

Board of Advisors

Elliott Abrams CFR, (Currently in Government Service)

Gerard Alexander University of Virginia

Max Boot Council on Foreign Relations

Jennifer Bryson Hudson Institute

Ian Brzezinski Atlantic Council

Kara Bue Armitage International

James Carafano The Heritage Foundation

Eliot Cohen Johns Hopkins University, SAIS

Elbridge Colby Center for a New American Security

Ambassador J. D. Crouch United Service Organizations

Jacqueline Deal Long Term Strategy Group

Michael Doran Hudson Institute

Colin Dueck George Mason University

Mackenzie Eaglen American Enterprise Institute

Thomas Farr Religious Freedom Institute

Peter Feaver Duke University

Michael Green Center for Strategic and International Studies

Jakub Grygiel Catholic University

John Hannah Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Kerry Healey Babson College

Brian Hook Latitude LLC, (Currently in Government Service)

William Inboden University of Texas, Austin

Robert Kagan Brookings Institution

Charles Kesler Claremont McKenna College

James C. Kraska U.S. Naval War College

William Kristol Defending Democracy Together

Daniel Leger Akre Capital Management

Robert Lieber Georgetown University

Thomas Mahnken Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

Peter Mansoor The Ohio State University

Wess Mitchell Center for European Policy Analysis

Henry R. Nau George Washington University

Michael O’Hanlon Brookings Institution

Mackubin Thomas Owens Foreign Policy Research Institute

General David Petraeus (Ret.) KKR Global Institute

Ambassador Mitchell Reiss Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Stanley Renshon City University of New York

Stephen Rosen Harvard University

Michael Rubin American Enterprise Institute

Paul D. Ryan Fox Corporation

Eric Sayers Beacon Global Strategies

Kori Schake International Institute for Strategic Studies

Randall Schriver Armitage International, (Currently in Government Service)

Ambassador Kristen Silverberg Business Roundtable

Ashley Tellis Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Roger Zakheim Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute

National Staff

Dr. Gabriel Scheinmann

Executive Director

Valerian Sikhuashvili

Program Director

Sydney Scribner

Marketing & Development Associate

Eamonn Bellin

Program Assistant

Contact

National Office

Email: Info@hamsoc.org

The Alexander Hamilton Society
1875 Connecticut Ave. , NW
10th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20009
United States of America

If you have questions about your chapters, are interested in starting AHS at your school, or have any other questions, please do not hesitate to call!