The Village Square » Dinner at the Square

If you can’t beat them, eat dinner with them.

Dinner at the Square is the signature Village Square event. At each dinner program, there is a new topical issue up for discussion.

Neither a new problem or a new solution

From the early days of our Republic, legislators came to Washington and lived in separate regional boarding houses. Far from the intended mixing of ideas from culturally and regionally diverse legislators, the psychology of the tribe took over. While they came to town with preexisting differences between legislators from other regions, their segregation by regions widened the divide. President Thomas Jefferson wrote that these legislators came to work “in a spirit of avowed misunderstanding, without the smallest wish to agree. Jefferson solved the problem by inviting a mixed region group of legislators to the White House for dinner no more than a dozen at a time, sat them at a round table to prevent squabbles on who rated the head of the table (and poured lots of wine, truth be told).

Upcoming Dinner Programs