Tocqueville Forum

Executive Committee

The Tocqueville Forum is guided by an Executive Committee named by the Chair of the Department of Government. Current members of the Executive Committee are:

Patrick J. Deneen, Founding Director

Patrick J. Deneen is the inaugural holder of the Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Chair of Hellenic Studies in the Department of Government and is the Founding Director of the Tocqueville Forum. He is the author of two books - The Odyssey of Political Theory and Democratic Faith - and numerous articles and reviews. He has written on figures as various as Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Vico, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Henry Adams, John Dewey, G.K. Chesterton, Reinhold Niebuhr, Christopher Lasch, Wendell Berry, Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and Wilson Carey McWilliams.   His work has appeared in academic journals and journals of opinion, including Political Theory, Perspectives on Political Science, Polis, Modern Language Studies, Social Research, Commonweal, Society, First Things, The Weekly Standard, The Hedgehog Review, The Dallas Morning News and The Philadelphia Inquirer.  He is currently at work on two book projects:  "Another America: The Alternative Tradition in American Political Thought" and "The Idea of Division of Labor in the History of Western Political Thought."  C.V.

Joshua Mitchell

Joshua Mitchell is Professor, and former Chair, of the Government Department. His research interest lies in the relationship between political thought and theology in the West. He has published articles in The Review of Politics, The Journal of Politics, The Journal of Religion, APSR, and Political Theory.In 1993 his book, Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Political Thought, was published by the University of Chicago Press. A second book, The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and American Future, was published in 1995, also by the University of Chicago Press. Dr. Mitchell most recent book, Plato's Fable: On the Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times, was published by Princeton University Press in 2006. He is currently working on another book manuscript, entitled Reinhold Niebuhr and the Politics of Hope.

Robert J. Lieber

Robert J. Lieber is Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University, where he has previously served as Chair of the Government Department and as Interim Chair of Psychology. He is an expert on American foreign policy and U.S. relations with the Middle East and Europe. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has taught at Harvard, Oxford and the University of California, Davis, and has been Visiting Fellow at St. Antony's College Oxford, the Harvard Center for International Affairs, the Atlantic Institute in Paris, the Brookings Institution in Washington, and Fudan University in Shanghai.

Dr. Lieber's latest book, The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century, was published by Cambridge University Press. In addition, he is author or editor of thirteen books on international relations and U.S. foreign policy. Professor Lieber has lectured widely in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In the policy realm, he has been a consultant to the State Department and for National Intelligence Estimates. He also has been a foreign policy advisor in several presidential campaigns. His opeds have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Harper's, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Ha'aretz, and Asharq Al-Awsat. His media appearances have included "The NewsHour"on PBS TV, ABC TV's "Good Morning America," "Nightline," NBC TV network news, CBS Evening News, CNN TV "Crossfire," the "O'Reilly Factor"on Fox TV, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Al-Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and other radio and TV programs in Europe, the Arab world and Israel. Among his assorted credits is a walk-on part in the Alfred Hitchcock film classic, NORTH BY NORTHWEST.