Light & Truth: Renewing America's Shared Story with Andrew Zwerneman

In this episode of Light & Truth, University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford sits down with educator and Cana Academy cofounder Andrew Zwerneman to ask a deceptively simple question: What is history—and why does it matter right now?

Zwerneman introduces History 250, an ambitious series of 6–8 minute short films designed to help Americans recover a truthful, unifying account of our past—one that helps form judgment, restore hope, and strengthen  solidarity in our common history as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary.

He explains why Cana Academy exists to “pump life into the humanities,” how History 250 serves teachers and communities beyond schools, and where you can watch the films and access supporting documents and maps.

Watch / explore: History250.org and CanaAcademy.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

It's such a pleasure to sit down with you, Andrew. We've known each other for a long time. You've been a lifelong educator and leader in the classical education space, about 20 years, almost 20 years as a headmaster. And before that, you were you were just a regular teacher. Just a regular teacher. And and I was in fact the beneficiary of two years of Humane Letter Seminar Direction Under You, where we work through at Trinity School at Greenlawn the Great Books Curriculum. That's really the hallmark of so much of what's happening within classical education. So it's such a joy to sit down with you today. Thank you for joining me for this conversation. Well, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

I'm just really honored to be here with you and be here at your beautiful university. University of Dallas is one of the most important institutions in the country, and I'm I couldn't be more pleased that a former student is uh heading up the enterprise here. I have great memories of being your teacher, and uh I'm still a regular teacher, so uh I still lead seminars from time to time and I put on lectures and things like that. So um that's wonderful. That was my calling.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I'm I'm glad to call myself a regular teacher. Well, I'm still a regular teacher, too, and it's it's one of the things that that keeps me going in the presidency is getting into the classroom on occasion and remembering what this is all about. Um remembering what this is all about is gonna be the main subject of what I want to talk with you um about today. You've you've engaged in a project called History 250, and um we're gonna get into the details of of why you have undertaken this project. I have viewed several of the short films. They are stunning, they're beautiful, they are um doing what I think your intention is, at least in me and any other viewer, which is to uh put before us people of great character to remind us of our shared history and to um really focus us on the future of the United States of America as we're embarking on this 250th anniversary. Uh but before we get into those details, this is this is a project that is under the umbrella of the Kana Academy. And what what is that project?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

That's right. Uh this is our our biggest history-related project. Uh, Kane Academy was established in 2016. Uh two other master teachers uh and I all retired from the classroom uh in one respect uh in that same year, and we decided to throw in our hundred plus years of experience, especially in leading seminars, uh, teaching literature and composition, teaching writing, uh teaching history, teaching art. We wanted to pump life into the humanities, and we carved out a niche within uh the classical education movement, especially among secondary teachers, and especially among seminar leaders. Uh we we call ourselves Cana Academy. Of course, we're inspired by the story from the Gospel of John about the wedding feast of Cana. Maybe more immediately, we're inspired by that beautiful story within the Brothers Karamaza by Dostoevsky. Uh, the main protagonist, Alyosha, experienced a personal crisis at every level when his mentor, Father Zadama, passed away. He was particularly uh in a critical state. And he experienced a dream version of the wedding feast of Cana. And uh coming out of that, he went outside, looked into the heavens, then he threw himself on the ground in a very Russian fashion, seemingly uh in an inadequate response to the grandeur uh and the mystery of the cosmos. Um, but it's entirely uh purposeful, meaningful, it's exactly what he should have done. And uh then he he got up and said, I know what to do now. Yeah, I know how to relate to my crazy father, my my uh uh my complicated brothers, and they're a very complicated women, and I know how to take care of uh the boys who are lost in town. Uh so he he found his way. So what we wanted to do is provide a source of renewal. We wanted uh teachers especially uh to get support, to have allies who are fellow regular teachers, um, and and uh in our work uh in training the teachers, and we've trained over 5,000 teachers over the last uh ten years, uh, and in all the the services and products that we provide. Uh some of them are free, some of them are are for sale, uh, but we created this website, Kane Academy, and uh this mission in order to pump life into the humanities.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Wow. Well, it's it's it's an inspiring work that you're engaged in, and it's fueling really a resurgence of uh genuine education in this country. So thank you for for your vision, your leadership, and the work you've done with so many teachers, 5,000 teachers. That's just remarkable. So why why this project? Why why the History 250 series? Yeah, it's kind of a good story.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

I I um uh co-founded Kaney Academy expecting that our uh most of what uh we would do it has to do with uh humane letters seminars. And in one respect that's true. Uh it's that's kind of our bread and butter offering, but the more I traveled the country, the more I kept running into teachers who uh were disconcerted about history. Um either they didn't really understand what history is, or they were um kind of rocked by the mounting anti-history culture in America, uh, particularly under the influence of the Howard Zinn Education Project and his most off-read book, uh People's History of the United States, under the 1619 Project, under other DEI voices, they increasingly felt like we couldn't say anything uh positive or uh even true about the American past, other than say um America is a land of of oppression. So they could only uh they were they were afraid that all they could do was speak to grievances. Uh and I thought, well, this this is this is really off. Uh this is unproductive, it's uncreative, and it's untrue to the past. Even a cursory glance at the American past, the Western past, the Christian past, there are all sorts of great things that have happened. Um and the only way to measure a failure like slavery or or um Indian removal or Japanese internment or something like that is to measure by what is truly good. So I I wrote a little book, History Forgotten and Remembered, and then of late I decided we're gonna try to pump um into the renewal of history, we're gonna pump uh 250 short films and all sorts of support pro um services. So we're gonna we have a big bank of films that we're building, we have an equally big bank of original documents and maps that support the teaching of history. But we also wanted this to be not not just a renewal of of how we teach history in the schools, we want it to be a renewal of how Americans think about their past. You and I are living today, the past has a big pull on us. Uh we we can only we we can't experience directly what our forebears, our ancestors experienced. The only way we can live as one with our ancestors is under history. So we have to have a shared story about our shared past. And I'm I'm dedicated to helping people uh grasp that once more and to live under history in that mode. And then in particular, I'm trying to renew the um the liberal discipline of history. That is, we want to be true to the past, what actually happened. We don't use the past as a call to political action. We we uh we study history in order to understand, to understand the past, which is different than the present, and also understand ourselves by observing those who came before us.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

When you when you say short films, um uh tell us exactly what that means and and and what venues you see these short films really having a an impact.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, they're short as in between six and eight minutes. Uh so they're uh on average they're around seven minutes. Um and uh uh we're utilizing what historians utilize. We use imagery as in portraiture and maps, we use data like uh comparative gross domestic products, uh demographic changes and things like that. Uh we use individual and group narratives, autobiography, say Frederick Douglass, or uh eyewitness accounts at a particular event. And then we we do some what historians call structural analysis, that we uh we look at say um a strategy employed to liberate Europe uh from the Northwest and to liberate it from the South by way of North Africa, Sicily, and so forth during World War II. Uh so we're trying to be true to history in that regard, and in the way we've structured the films, they they kind of train teachers and their students to think that way. Uh the venues are not just schools, uh we also are trying to land them in uh uh church groups, uh retirement communities and uh senior citizen organizations, uh American Legion and DF uh W Post. Uh we want to uh be able to uh access prisons and returning citizen uh programs. The idea is that anybody who is an American uh uh they should understand our past. We we have this in common. It should be a great source of unity for us, not a source of division. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Um what what is history? Well, uh history is the uh on on one level, history is a study. It's a it's a it's a discipline. Um interesting that the father of the liberal art and sciences, Aristotle, never worked up history as either an art or a science. Yeah, right. In Aristotelian terms, I I think history is more like rhetoric. It's an art. Yeah. But it's reliant upon past cases. Yeah. Uh so historians uh reach into the past and they recreate events. Uh they do it observationally. Uh we would say it's uh objective. Uh it's not just receptive or emotional or something like that. Uh but history is also um it's a narrative. I mean that's why it's really an art. So it's a story. Um it unlike philosophy, it doesn't deal in in universals, it deals in singulars. Singular person, singular events, singular uh places. And uh so in that regard, uh we learn from history uh and it's a field of knowledge, but it's also a story. Yeah. Uh and and so we don't get universal lessons out of it, even though it shapes our our practical judgments. Yeah. So it's kind of a hybrid. Some people would say history is the the story or the the study of uh change in a society moving in time. Um I would say uh history is also um I think most importantly, most meaningful, history is our shared past. Yes. Uh and uh we are by nature historical critters.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Uh sometimes in in say in the classical education movement, maybe with in philosophy, we sort of forget that. Yes. That uh we we think uh like philosophers often think of history as having agency, it's sort of a force, it's sort of a and some and rightly they also think of history in terms of a concept. And like being in nature, it's a concept of unity. It's how we get our minds around the past, the present, and the future, or the community of the dead, the living, and the yet to be born. But I think the most important thing here, and what we're emphasizing in history 250, is that history is our shared story, that we have a shared existence, and mysteriously, remarkably, wonderfully, meaningfully, uh we share a life with the dead and the yet to be born.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, yeah. No, thank thank you for that. Uh it it it was a short question, but not an easy question to answer, right? What what is history? And um, you know, Hegel um has a particular way of thinking about history as that that um emergence of the spirit. Um Christians um have a way of thinking about history that's tied to salvation history, really rooted in the Jewish experience that's different than than what we find within the Roman understanding, right, of establishing a republic forever for all time. That's right. And and and and the Greek understanding of history was was um different from both of those. And yet we look to Jerusalem, we look to Athens, we look to Rome for our our shared uh history. And um how how do those three cities come to be embodied in the narrative unity that is our shared history as Americans?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

I think one way to answer that question is to recognize that those are our three principal sources of culture. And and culture is the collection of what we know and love. Uh uh but these uh the body of knowledge and love has to be re-collected. So uh almost by by uh definition, culture is historical. Uh we think about um Saint Augustine's beautiful uh image of the mind. You got um understanding, uh love, and memory. But the memory collects the other two, and the and the memory, wonderfully, mysteriously, according to Saint Augustine, is of infinite recess. So uh kind of akin to the way uh Socrates talked about knowledge as recollection, Saint Augustine would would say that we can recall things that are eternal. Right. Like so we who live in the temporal can recall things that are eternal. And it's part of that magnificent uh tradition uh where Aristotle would call the mind the the noose, right, the divine or the highest thing in us, and Saint Augustine says the mind places it just below God. Uh so coming back to history or coming back to uh Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome, who we are uh is not an abstraction. Who we are uh uh you might say is an existence, and existence requires time, place, and so forth. So uh what we call Western culture came together under the impulse of Latin Christianity was the convergence of of Athens and Jerusalem in Rome. Uh and we don't normally think of the Romans as humble, but but they did. They recognize Greek philosophy as as a better way of thinking, and they recognize um uh Christianity as a better religion. And of course after a while. After a while, yeah, it took some time. And it took it took uh something uh non-philosophical. It it took uh in no small measure it took the example of the Christians taking care of the poor. Right. The Christians who remembered uh Christ says, Do this in memory of me, which is not just to um celebrate the Eucharist, it's also to live under Christ and all the events of his life, his resurrection, uh, and so forth. And uh the early Christians in Rome, in pagan Rome, who had uh very little money and no political power, organized themselves in an unprecedented way to take care of the pagan, Jewish, and Christian poor. And uh this was a huge example to the Romans and and a major uh impetus for for people to convert to Christianity. Um and and so uh the right there is a great narrative of of how we need to think about uh the transcendent in time. So the eternal God intervenes in time. He does this through the Exodus events, he does this through the incarnation, and uh and the the fundamental role that we have as humans is to respond to that. And uh the early Christians in pagan Rome did a great job. So what when I say uh it came together under the impulse of Latin Christianity, it it wasn't just uh say someone like St. Augustine who brought it together, you know, faith-seeking understanding, understanding, seeking faith, but it's also the example of Christians who remember Christ and they live out their lives in that memory. Uh that's pay dirt.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, yeah, thank you. So um America has um uh long had citizens who have not come out of you know what was the Latin West, and um we we we have taken in citizens from all over the globe. And um how is it that somebody coming from Africa or somebody coming from Asia um uh can see themselves in or him or herself in this in this um um history that's so rooted in Athens and Jerusalem and Rome? Yeah. And and and yeah, the distinctiveness of the American political uh structure.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

That's another tough question, and you put your finger on uh a pointed debate. So some people would interpret uh America as a creedal nation. That is, you to be an American you have to believe, say, what the the tenets are that are in play at the American founding. That's a pretty good position. That's a good way to interpret America. But what about people who don't think so much philosophically? Uh uh I think that I think this is where uh history is is a broader tent. And that is um anyone can look at the heroism of uh the men and women who built the country, uh the pioneers, um, men and women who were enslaved, and yet when, you know, they endured uh as family, and then on the other side of freedom, you know, they began to carve out their lives in America as uh free citizens. Uh anyone could look at um they could go to Normandy to the to the American cemetery there, and um they could say they could hear the story of the great sacrifice those men made. Um the the lintel there at the memorial uh talks about uh the shores of Normandy being a portal of freedom. Uh what does that mean? That means what those men did is they gave their lives for the freedom of the French. They weren't just defending our freedom, they were actually liberating Europe. Uh uh you don't have to be an American to embrace that. You could be a Frenchman, you could be a German. Uh isn't it remarkable that after World War II, uh having defeated the two greatest mortal enemies that we ever had, the Americans helped uh the Germans and the Japanese write their constitutions. And their constitutions were what we call liberal constitutions. They look a lot like uh the common law of of England and the uh the codified law of of Europe, but also a lot like American law. And uh they've been our political and economic allies ever since. Has it been perfect? No, it's sometimes been rocky, especially with our our German neighbors. But uh my point there is that anyone could come here and say, well, that's a remarkable story. Yeah. Like the the the on the surface, the laws themselves in America, Germany, and uh Japan are not overtly religious. Uh now, uh a true account for them has to take into account that the American founders were for the most part Christian. All of them were steeped in in some form of the natural law, especially uh all the lawyers who signed the declaration and the constitution were were trained under Blackstone's commentaries on the law. Uh a lot of them would have known the natural law by way of Cicero. All of them knew their Bible, even guys like Franklin and uh Jefferson. Um uh and things like um the most well, the most um important story from the Bible to them was the Exodus story. The most off-sided uh book in the Bible is Deuteronomy. The most off-sided author within the Bible is St. Paul. And uh he was he was quoted as much uh during the the time of the Constitutional Convention as was Mesquie or Locke. Yeah. Uh remarkable, right? Or Blackstone. And um maybe not more than Locke, but certainly as much as Montesquieu and and Blackstone. Uh all is to say is the um there are acts of heroism, uh creativity. Um anyone coming here could look at uh uh the building of the Brooklyn Bridge uh or the um or the pioneers who went along the Oregon Trail. Uh anyone could look at uh the fact that Jim Thorpe, a Native American, was the first uh Olympic athlete to win the pentathlon and the decathlon uh at one event. Anyone could look at Jesse Jones Owens, a black American who was the first athlete to ever win four medals at an Olympics, and in the midst of the constraints provided by Hitler and uh the Nazi hosts. These are great stories. And uh and and people could embrace them. Uh look, America early, I mean, you know, in the by the middle of the 1800s, America became the number one destination for immigrants internationally. It's it's held that position ever since. Why? Because America is a land of freedom. And uh some people say, oh yeah, freedom to do whatever or for you know for personal interests. But I don't think so. I think America's a land of ordered freedom. Uh and um the the revolutionary generation was dedicated to something more than personal license. They were personal interests. They're they were dedicated to a notion that um our rights, whether you're Jewish or Christian or Muslim or agnostic, our our rights come from a transcendent source that we we didn't create. And uh the reason we can hold to the proposition that all men are created equal, all humans are created equal, uh, is it comes from beyond us. And I think people of different faith and different backgrounds uh can can hold to that. And um at the very least they can see uh the courage and uh the work and the love uh of American forebears that went into uh establishing and preserving a society dedicated to that.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yeah, thank you thank you for that answer. That was that was uh magnificent. The um you know those examples of courage that that we learn, right? The the the hope that we might have to uh Continue the story in a way that's rooted in the one that we have remembered. That's a genuine hope. And I want to ask you to connect it to a term I I know I've seen you use in an article, inner freedom. And you've talked about the liberal order, freedom that that's that's secured by our mode of government. And um what what does that notion have to do with the the story we see ourselves part of?

SPEAKER_01 22:38

I think of inner freedom as intellectual, uh moral, and spiritual freedom. Uh by nature, I think we are called uh to um live by the truth. We're we are we're the truth will set us free, right? But to live by the truth and we and we find the truth, we look for the truth wherever we can find it. Um we're also called to live by noble purposes. Not not any old purpose, but noble purposes. And uh and thirdly, um we're called to live out our lives generously, even sacrificially, for the sake of the other. You might you might say uh to live by the truth, to live by noble moral purposes, and to give our lives sacrificially is the very meaning of what it what it is to be a person. Yeah. And uh a person by nature mediates between uh what is beyond the individual and who the individual represents. Um the uh when Abraham Lincoln eulogized the men who fell at Gettysburg, he said, we can't consecrate the ground. They did, that the giving the last full measure of their devotion to freedom consecrates the ground. And there's a sense in which the soldiers mediated between Lincoln and and themselves. They mediated between uh all the slaves that were meant to be free and the rest of Americans who could do something about their their freedom. Um so I I think that that's the heart of the matter, I think. And and uh uh the beauty of the American Republic, and it's not perfect, but the the beauty of the American Republic, it's given an enormous field of freedom to to uh cultivate a life of interior freedom. Uh so many of our first settlers came here for the sake of religious freedom. Charles Carroll, one of the arguably the first great Catholic statesmen in America, um, you know, he lived in Maryland, and Maryland was established in no small measure to be uh a haven for uh Catholic seeking religious liberty, better than they had in in England. Uh soon after they they came to Maryland, they lost their freedom. And uh there was political strife between Catholics and and their Protestant neighbors. Charles Carroll, however, didn't throw in the towel on America. He he actually believed the stuff that he and his fellow founders articulated as true liberty. And um uh uh he was not only a uh co-signer of the Declaration, uh he he was um an apologist for the kinds of freedoms against British tyranny that his Protestant neighbors were in favor of. And then on the other side of the Revolutionary War, he helped restore religious liberty for Catholics, uh, which became um a um a foundation for religious liberty for Jews and and for other uh Marylanders. Uh I love that kind of story. And and I think that what when we again when we look at the the narrative, what actually happened, these are the kinds of things that anyone could look at and say, that's remarkable. Yeah, it's inspiring. In and of itself, it seems true. You know, so even if a person doesn't kind of wax analytical or philosophical, uh he or she could see that something is going on there that's true to our humanity. Yeah. And that's and that comes back to the notion of interior freedom. Is that at the end of the day, uh how we work, uh how we courageously face our sufferings, and everybody suffers, uh, and how we uh love uh is exemplified by others. And we learn about ourselves primarily by observing others. We know this is true. Uh the uh even before a baby can think a thought, uh, you know, he's in the arms of his parents who love him, who talk to him, and even before he really knows what he's saying, he's babbling back, you know, words that he learns from them. He's observing. And uh this is the most fundamental way to learn. And we too uh look back uh to our forebears and we learn about ourselves, and and that that's why history is a source of freedom. Yes, it's not just um kind of one darn thing after another. Right, it really is a source of inner freedom.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for the work you plowed into this project. I hope that everyone in America will have an opportunity to to really receive the fruits of that work. Um, where do they go to find History 250?

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Yeah, thanks for asking. So uh it's simple. You can uh go to our Cana Academy website, www.kanaacademy.org, or more directly to www.history, the word, and the number 250250.org. And again, you'll go there. Uh we're building out our bank of films. We have 50 films live right now, and we have uh support documents and maps for each of the films as well. And we'll be building that out uh over the course of uh this great anniversary year. Um I hope we'll finish this year. If not, we'll keep plowing. But the the inspiration is that the most important republic in history, and that's a grand statement. Certainly the most important republic in modern history. Um the historian uh Walter McDougall has has said this. The most important event in modern history is the establishment in the American Republic. It's a remarkable story, uh, and that we're tearing 250 is a great occasion to remember the good things we've done. And in remembering those things, uh it restores our hope, restores our sympathy for one another, our solidarity, uh, and all sorts of other uh great things that make for a good life interiorly and uh exteriorly. Well, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you. Thanks for having me, of course.