PRESENTERS

Dr. Richard (Ric) Berman

Ric researches and speaks on English, Irish, and American Freemasonry, with a focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has written numerous journal articles and some ten books and has given keynote talks worldwide. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Ric holds a master’s degree in economics and a doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge and the University of Exeter, respectively, following which he spent two years post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford.

 Ric has been a Freemason for over forty years and has twice been the United Grand Lodge of England’s Prestonian Lecturer. He holds Grand Rank in the United Grand Lodge of England and is a past master of three English lodgesincluding Quatuor Coronati Lodge, the premier lodge of Masonic research, and chairs ‘QCCC’ – the QC Correspondence Circle, the oldest Masonic Research Society in the world.  

Ric is also an American freemason, a member or honorary member of lodges in five states, a Fellow of the Philalethes Society and a member of the Society of Blue Friars.

Dr. John Cooper

Past Grand Master John Cooper is the former master of three California research lodges, and past president of the Philalethes Society – America’s oldest and largest Masonic research organiztion.  He has presented papers at several international conferences on the history of Freemasonry, and is a published author.

He was a public school teacher and administrator, including a tour of duty as superintendent of a high school district in San Diego County before coming to San Francisco to become Grand Secretary of the Masonic Grand Lodge of California.  He served in the latter position for eighteen years, and was president of the Conference of Grand Secretaries.  In 2013 he was elected as Grand Master of Masons in California, and during his term as Grand Master he served as Chairman of the Conference of Grand Masters of Masons in North America. 

John has a master’s degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in education from Claremont Graduate University.  His main research interests are in the history of ideas, and the interaction of Freemasonry with political society.  He is a Thirty-Third Degree Mason in the Scottish Rite, and is a Knight of the York Grand Cross of Honour. He also has held leaderhship positions in many of the smaller rites and degrees of Freemasonry. 

Dr. Susan Sommers

Dr. Susan Mitchell Sommers, Professor Emeritus of History, Saint Vincent College, has been calling it like it is since her first year on the history faculty in 1993.

At that time, there were few women teaching at Saint Vincent College, and Susan brought the hidden lives of everyday people into the light, from small town citizens to free masons in esoteric communities. In her teaching, she developed what she calls the Oatmeal Theory of History, which showcases the challenges and recognizes the importance of studying history as the stuff that both radically changes lives while those lives also appear to stand still. She explains to students that for thousands of years, our ancestors got up every morning, ate a bowl of oatmeal, and then went out into the fields to cultivate oats. Then they came home, ate a bowl of oatmeal, and went to sleep. For thousands of years. But, if we taught about that in history classes, everyone would all get up and leave, even though it is the way things actually happened. We speed things up, highlight the changes, make history seem far more exciting than it generally was for the people living it. So, while Susan may talk about the Scientific Revolution or Spanish Civil War as times of sweeping change, she reminds us that most people were still eating oatmeal and growing oats.

Susan has published four books, forty articles, more than a dozen book reviews, and has delivered countless presentations. Her main teaching and research interests are in British and intellectual history, especially of the eighteenth century. Her publications include book-length studies of freemasonry, esoterism, and small-town parliamentary politics. Susan is currently working on a biography of Rev. James Anderson (1679-1739), a Presbyterian minister from Scotland who was responsible for the first book of masonic constitutions in 1723. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the UK.