On September 28, the Institute hosted the 2026 Dorothy Garrett Martin Lecture in Values and Ethics with Teresa Bejan, professor of political theory at the University of Oxford and fellow of Oriel College. In her lecture, titled “First Among Equals: Redeeming Equality as a Political Ideal,” Bejan asked a question that sounds simple 250 years after the Declaration of Independence: What do we actually mean when we say all people are created equal?

During her visit to DePauw, Bejan met over coffee with Hillman Interns, ICDP Fellows and other student leaders. She also had lunch with faculty and staff, and joined the sisters of Delta Gamma for dinner before the lecture. The next day, she visited PHIL 209: Voices and Votes, a course on democratic citizenship connected to this Fall’s major exhibit.

Bejan drew on her new book, “First Among Equals: Visions of Equality before Egalitarianism” (Harvard University Press). She traced the idea of equality from Aristotle and Roman law to John Lilburne, a 17th-century English activist, jailhouse lawyer and distant relative of Thomas Jefferson. Lilburne, she argued, took an ancient idea that had long propped up hierarchy and turned it into a demand that ordinary people be treated as peers. She said that move left a bigger mark on the Declaration than John Locke’s philosophy did.

Bejan didn’t avoid the uncomfortable parts of that history. Rather than give up on equality, though, she urged the audience to recover its complexity. Today’s debates over “equality” and “equity,” she suggested, are less a fight for or against equality than a contest over which of its meanings should come first.

The evening concluded with a conversation between Bejan and Alex Richardson, Associate Director at the Prindle Institute, followed by audience questions. Her closing thought: We are created equal “not by the ‘law of nature and nature’s god,’ but by each other, every day.”