Cambridge and the American Experiment
On May 29, 2026, when a group of leading scholars, journalists, artists, politicians, and historians gather at the Ray Dolby Centre at Cambridge, the University will continue and deepen its centuries-long relationship with the United States.
The event, entitled The United States of America at 250: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of Independence, is a daylong public conversation about the Declaration of Independence and its many afterlives.
“We think it’s the biggest America 250 event anywhere outside the US, which is fitting because Cambridge has more scholars working on the United States than any institution anywhere outside the US,” said Nicholas Guyatt (Emmanuel 1992 and Jesus College Fellow), a professor of American history at Cambridge. The Puritan settlement of New England was led by men educated at Cambridge, and three of the University’s graduates became signatories of the Declaration of Independence: Thomas Lynch Jr. (Gonville and Caius), Arthur Middleton (Trinity Hall), and Thomas Nelson (Christ’s College).
“Cambridge has been in this game for a long time,” said Guyatt, who is also one of the driving forces behind CUSAC — the Centre for the United States of America at Cambridge — a new interdisciplinary center that aims to consolidate Cambridge’s reputation as a vital resource for examining the United States from the outside in. “Back in 1630, when the Puritan ship Arabella arrived in Massachusetts Bay, it was carrying John Winthrop, who had studied at Trinity College in Cambridge. Winthrop and many Cambridge graduates who crossed the Atlantic in the 1640s helped to found the settlements of New England. It's no stretch to say that they were pioneers of the idea of constitutional government – the idea that would play such an important role in the Founding. Nearly a hundred and fifty years before the Declaration of Independence, Cambridge was already shaping what would become the United States.”
Among those commemorating and interrogating the US Declaration of Independence on May 29 will be some of the most influential thought-leaders on the history, policy, and global influence of the United States. It will also be an important moment for CUSAC. “We're announcing our campaign to endow the new Centre for the United States of America at Cambridge,” said Guyatt, “and we could not be more excited about it.”