River Foxwell
Pro re publica
About
I study how republics finance power. At The University of Texas at Austin, that curiosity manifests as an Economics degree and an apprenticeship with the renowned historian H. W. Brands.
My work follows the same fascination, as I look upon the United States with the utmost dedication to service. I identify problems or insufficiencies and work to solve or change them, such that the government will be better at serving the American people.
Selected Work
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The Radical Republic
An essay arguing that radicalism is not a departure from the American constitutional tradition but a structural feature of it — the mechanism by which the republic has repeatedly remade itself.
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A Life of John Jay
A cradle-to-grave biography of the first Chief Justice — and, through his chairmanship of the Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, America’s first counterintelligence chief. The work begins where a biography must: a worldwide census of his papers, indexed in a single union database.
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Footprint Is Not Power
Washington is right to end the age of Europe as an American garrison. But a drawdown that weakens Article 5 or gives away NATO’s integrating machinery would turn a necessary adjustment into a strategic loss. The United States should make Europe carry the conventional burden while keeping the architecture that makes the alliance run.
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Hamiltonian Construction, Jeffersonian Compromises
The Supreme Court ended one tariff regime. Congress should use the ensuing rewrite to reclaim trade power and to rebuild the institutions that govern American economic statecraft.
Ideas
- Revere
- The Continental Fellowship
- The Junto
Civic & Service
- Lead, Employer Voice: a standing interview project with the University of Texas at Austin’s largest employers, reported to the Office of the Executive Vice President & Provost.
- Code Chair to Ford Myers, University-wide Representative, UT Austin Student Government.
- Member, Alexander Hamilton Society, UT Austin chapter.
Beyond Work
Beyond my work, I read — chiefly history and philosophy, and above all the lives of the American founding generation, whom I take as inspiration. That interest reaches even my heraldry: like the founders, I have set aside the display of arms and preserve the craft for the design of seals.
I also take pleasure in keeping a journal, in travel, and in chess, where strategy is a pleasure rather than a duty.
Correspondence
- riverfoxwell@gmail.com