Tocqueville Forum

Tocqueville Forum Supports Noted Visiting Faculty

The Tocqueville Forum is pleased to announce our material support of two outstanding visiting faculty members teaching courses at Georgetown University this Spring.

Peter Berkowitz, Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at George Mason University School of Law, is teaching an advanced undergraduate seminar, "Critique and Defense of Religion," a course about the grounds, moral and political imperatives, and vitality of biblical faith. It explores the writings of thinkers such as Spinoza, Hobbes, and Kant as well as twentieth-century figures like Martin Buber and Leo Strauss. A contributor to many popular periodicals, Berkowitz also is the author of Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999) and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995).

James Ceaser, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, is teaching a graduate seminar, "Foundational Ideas in American Political Development," a course about the different foundations -- nature, history, and religion -- political arguments have been grounded on throughout American history. He has written several books on American politics and political thought, including Presidential Selection, Liberal Democracy and Political Science, Reconstructing America, and Nature and History in American Political Development. Professor Ceaser has held visiting professorships at the University of Florence, the University of Basel, Oxford University, the University of Bordeaux, and the University of Rennes. Professor Ceaser is a frequent contributor to the popular press, and he often comments on American Politics for the Voice of America.

The Tocqueville Forum is proud to contribute to the course offerings provided to Georgetown students, and in particular to help ensure that the serious study of the great texts of the Western political, philosophical, and theological traditions remains a vital component of a Georgetown liberal arts education.