Meriwether Academy

Meriwether Academy was founded by Warren Steury, who also serves as its president. In 2025, Steury, then 28, met contributor Nick Gallo at a Pamphleteer event, when Meriwether was just getting started. Beyond hosting men’s events, Steury’s vision included founding a school for boys dedicated to classical and outdoor education, which he described as something like a cross between Plato’s Academy and the Boy Scouts.⁠[1][2][2][2]

In 2025, Meriwether hosted Michael Millerman, founder of the online Millerman School of political philosophy, for several symposium dinners on Leo Strauss’s What Is Political Philosophy? and Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind; that year its weekly reading group studied texts including American presidents’ inaugural addresses, Pericles’ funeral oration, the Declaration of Independence, Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” and Thoreau’s “Walking.”⁠[2][2][2][2]

In March 2026, The Pamphleteer published a feature introducing the new Nashville men’s group as dedicated to reviving the ideal of the American man. It described Meriwether’s three kinds of events: quarterly outdoor retreats, where about a dozen men spend a weekend at a countryside home on themes ranging from outdoor skills such as hog slaughtering to talks on figures from American history; monthly philosophy dinner symposiums in the city that follow the rule of Thomas Jefferson’s dinner parties, with only one person speaking at a time and a moderator guiding the discussion with questions; and a weekly reading group of about half a dozen men in a coffee shop, which that year began reading all 46 chapters of Plutarch’s Lives, one chapter at a time.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2]

From September 28 to October 19, 2026, Peter Thiel gave a four-part “Antichrist” lecture series in Nashville, presented by The Pamphleteer with Meriwether Academy as co-host. On the day of the final lecture, October 19, The Pamphleteer’s newsletter said it was presenting the final night of the series in collaboration with Meriwether Academy.⁠[3][3][4]

On the afternoon of October 19, 2026, Meriwether Academy co-hosted the lunch panel “Building on the Cultural Frontier” in Nashville with The Pamphleteer, Oyarsa, and The Piraeus. The event description said Meriwether currently operates as a men’s civic organization hosting outdoor retreats, great books dialogues, and formal-dress philosophy dinners, and ultimately aspires to build a boys’ school centered on classical and outdoor education; Steury spoke on his vision for reviving the ideal of the American man.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

Meriwether Academy’s motto is “For the Revitalization of The American Man,” and its work has three parts: men’s gatherings centered on the liberal arts and humanities to cultivate brotherhood; wilderness education for men and boys that instills self-reliance and resourcefulness; and a long-term mission to found a boys’ school in Tennessee. As of October 2026, it said it was not yet a school but a Nashville 501(c)(3) community for men.⁠[5][5][5][5][6]

Its free Gentlemen’s Classics Book Club meets weekly over coffee at 7 a.m., on Wednesdays in Nashville and Tuesdays in Chattanooga, and in fall 2026 was reading Plutarch’s Lives in the Dryden translation, one Life a week. Dinner lectures and workshops are for men only; recent speakers included Alex Petkas on Plutarch, Mark Anderson of Belmont University, Jason Pedicone of the Paideia Institute, and author Joe Allen on technology and the Antichrist myth. Expeditions include a 16-mile backpacking trip through Savage Gulf State Park for men 18 and older, canoe trips on the Buffalo River, and father-and-son campouts for boys 8 and older.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6][6][6][7]

It says it draws on the Western and Christian tradition but welcomes men of all faiths; it takes its name from explorer Meriwether Lewis, who led the Corps of Discovery across the continent to the Pacific.⁠[6][6][5][5]

Meriwether Academy is planning a classical, screen-free boarding school in Tennessee where boys would study the great books and learn to live on the land; as of October 2026, the school was still in its founding phase and had not opened. It also says it hopes similar schools can eventually be established in every US state.⁠[8][8][3]

It is funded by event fees and donations: the weekly book club is free, while dinner lectures and expeditions are ticketed. Monthly donors form a patron group called the “Corps of Discovery,” with monthly tiers from $20 to $1,000, and gifts support current programs as well as land, founding faculty, and curriculum for the school. Meriwether Academy, Inc. is a Tennessee nonprofit corporation registered as a 501(c)(3) organization, and contributions are tax-deductible as permitted by law.⁠[6][8][8][8][8][5]

Meriwether Academy: Official website: https://meriwetheracademy.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]