Welcome to the Roosevelt Center

A New Field of Academic Inquiry…

Since the mid-twentieth century, the subject of Freemasonry has gained enhanced respectability as a field of serious historical inquiry, and part of a wider investigation into the emergence and evolution of civil society. Sixty Ph.D. dissertations produced in universities alone during the past decade have focused on some aspect of Freemasonry. The academic study of Freemasonry is also well underway in North, Central and South America, in the Caribbean and across Europe. There has been insufficient methodical communication, and planning, however, between the Masonic community and professional academic institutions.

Our Mission…

The goal of the Roosevelt Center is to serve as a focal point for conversation, inquiry and action by students, faculty, Masons and others interested in the emerging scholarly fields of civil society and Freemasonry, in California and across the world. The Center approaches Freemasonry as an association historically representative of civil society as it developed from the eighteenth-century onwards. It supports inquiry into the role Freemasonry assumed in private and public life. It also explores Masonic thought in a variety of historical and contemporary settings. The approach of the Center is multi-disciplinary, comparative and intended to support work at multiple institutions as well as with independent scholars.

Objectives…

• Improve understanding of civil society and Freemasonry.
• Inform universities in California, the Masonic community and the learning public about the emerging field of the academic study of Freemasonry, and the advantages and need for comparative and global studies.
• Facilitate funding for basic research and travel grants, scholarship programs, post-doctoral fellowships, communications, and exchange programs.
• Convene conferences and exhibitions at appropriate facilities.
• Publish studies, papers, supplemental materials and news from academic conferences held on the topics of civil society and or Freemasonry.

We highly recommend reading The Past and Future in Masonic Scholarship by Professor Margaret Jacob, UCLA, which details why this study is necessary. Also The Study of Freemasonry as an New Academic Discipline by Professor Andrew Prescott.  Both of those pieces are available here at the Roosevelt Center site.  Throughout the site you will see scholarship as well by Professor Cécile Révauger, Professor José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, Professor Mary Vázquez-Semadeni, and and a growing amount of materials from others.