He was one of the leaders in the 1988 National Endowment for the Humanities Teachers' Institute on "Mark Twain, Individualism and Commitment in American Life." He led a session at the Center's first Mark Twain Conference in 1989 entitled "Twain's
Connecticut Yankee, The Prince and the Public." In 1994, he conducted a four-week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for Teachers at Quarry Farm on "Mark Twain's Political Thought." At the 1997 conference, he chaired the panel on "Mark Twain and Politics." He also participated numerous times in the Center's lecture series, The Trouble Begins at Eight.