Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 17, 2025
Rudy Hernandez is a lifelong, self-proclaimed political nerd — and proud of it.
“Even when I was a teen, you couldn’t take me away from a presidential debate,” he says. Years later, he brings that same political passion as director of the Kinder Institute’s Constitutional Democracy Academy (CDA). “I get to share this material with younger people,” he says. “This is the American story.”
Hernandez’s Mizzou run started in 2017 after he received his doctorate in political theory at Louisiana State University. At the institute, he teaches constitutional democracy and political science and has served as the CDA’s director since its 2022 inception. Designed for rising junior and senior high school students in and around Missouri, the summer program has grown to include more college-level classes and lectures, as well as an annual formal dinner highlighted by keynote speakers including Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Rhodes Russell, JD ’83. The CDA also supports the Wall Scholars program, in which four participants who aim to study constitutional democracy at Mizzou each earn a four-year scholarship.
Several CDA graduates have come through his Intellectual World of the American Founders class, Hernandez says. “It’s always great to hear that the CDA got them excited about academics, and I love hearing what sessions meant the most to them — even if they weren’t the ones I taught!”
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