Alan Keyes was awarded a Ph.D. in government affairs from Harvard in 1979, after writing his dissertation on the theory of American constitutional government.
He began his college studies ten years earlier at Cornell University, where he was influenced by American philosopher Allan Bloom — of whom Keyes said: "In terms of my academic and intellectual formation, the most important teacher I had." Bloom later became well known for his best-selling book The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, a critique of U.S. higher education and its lack of enduring moral foundations.
After receiving threats against his life for criticizing the takeover of Cornell's administration building by militant black students, and after spending a year in Paris under Cornell's study abroad program, Keyes transferred to Harvard, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1972 in government affairs and taught from 1974 to 1978 as a teaching fellow while doing his graduate work.
He eventually became a college president — serving a year as Interim President of Alabama A&M University in 1991.
Commenting on his formative years at Cornell and Harvard, Dr. Keyes told a C-SPAN interviewer in 1999 that
Even in his early years, Keyes was a high achiever. At his high school in San Antonio, Texas, he was president of the student council. When he was 16, he was elected president of the American Legion Boys Nation, the first African American to hold this position. His speech "The blessings of liberty, the blessings of life" won the Legion's annual contest when he was a high school junior.
Today, Dr. Keyes has distinguished himself not only by his masterful addresses on constitutional themes — backed by his formidable academic skills and delivered without notes — but his challenging philosophical essays on pressing matters of public policy.
He is also the author of two books: Masters of the Dream: The Strength and Betrayal of Black America and Our Character, Our Future: Reclaiming America's Moral Destiny.
He began his college studies ten years earlier at Cornell University, where he was influenced by American philosopher Allan Bloom — of whom Keyes said: "In terms of my academic and intellectual formation, the most important teacher I had." Bloom later became well known for his best-selling book The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, a critique of U.S. higher education and its lack of enduring moral foundations.
After receiving threats against his life for criticizing the takeover of Cornell's administration building by militant black students, and after spending a year in Paris under Cornell's study abroad program, Keyes transferred to Harvard, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1972 in government affairs and taught from 1974 to 1978 as a teaching fellow while doing his graduate work.
He eventually became a college president — serving a year as Interim President of Alabama A&M University in 1991.
Commenting on his formative years at Cornell and Harvard, Dr. Keyes told a C-SPAN interviewer in 1999 that
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I actually went to Cornell, initially, because I was interested in something they called the "six-year Ph.D. program" there. I was in a hurry when I was finishing up high school, and I thought, "Oh, I'll go in. I'll finish up" — because it was a program where you took the four-year, usual undergraduate course work, and you compressed it into two to three years, and then you would add on top of that another several years, so that you would finish a Ph.D. in a six-year course of study from the time you started undergraduate school. Moving along fairly quickly, in other words — and that intrigued me, and I applied for it and got in.
And then when I got to college, I discovered that learning wasn't something I wanted to speed up. So I actually ended up abandoning those ideas and settling in to spend more time at things that I thought were worthwhile to study.
Even in his early years, Keyes was a high achiever. At his high school in San Antonio, Texas, he was president of the student council. When he was 16, he was elected president of the American Legion Boys Nation, the first African American to hold this position. His speech "The blessings of liberty, the blessings of life" won the Legion's annual contest when he was a high school junior.
Today, Dr. Keyes has distinguished himself not only by his masterful addresses on constitutional themes — backed by his formidable academic skills and delivered without notes — but his challenging philosophical essays on pressing matters of public policy.
He is also the author of two books: Masters of the Dream: The Strength and Betrayal of Black America and Our Character, Our Future: Reclaiming America's Moral Destiny.
Notable writings and speeches by Dr. Keyes
Among the most notable writings and speeches by Dr. Keyes are the following appeals to faithful application of constitutional principles and safeguards to today's controversies — well worth more than a casual reading by policy makers, legislators, office holders, and serious students of America's "culture war":- On the establishment of religion: What the Constitution really says (Aug. 26, 2003)
- Judicial review and executive responsibility (March 28, 2005)
- Truthful intolerance (March 27, 2006)
- Where's the respect for law? (April 15, 2006)
- Educating the Defenders of Liberty (Dec. 1999)
- Confronting the judicial war on faith (April 8, 2005)
- War on Christians Conference speech (March 28, 2006), Washington, D.C.
- Grace Baptist Church Address, Dec. 5, 2004, Decatur, Illinois
- On foreign policy and national security (Aug. 25, 2004), Lincolnwood, Illinois
- Solutions to America's border crisis (June 21, 2006), Provo, Utah
- California rally in defense of marriage (May 22, 2004), Sacramento, California
- Victory Apostolic Faith Church (Sept. 5, 2005), Chicago, Illinois
- Keynote address at the First Jerusalem Summit (Oct. 14, 2003), Jerusalem
- Faith, freedom, and the Constitution (Feb. 7, 2004), Hillsdale, Michigan
- Centre for New Black Leadership event in honor of Justice Clarence Thomas (Oct. 17, 2001), Washington, D.C.
- Israel's Independence Day Festival (April 21, 2002), Los Angeles, California
- Illinois Agricultural Legislative Roundtable Candidates' Forum (Sept. 8, 2004), Bloomington, Illinois
- National Federation of Republican Assemblies (Aug. 31, 2004), New York City
- The Declaration of Independence and the Spirit of American Law (Feb. 21, 1997), Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California
- Alan Keyes' Speech to the Home Educators' Association of Virginia (June 16, 1995), Richmond, Virginia
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