A Liberal Republic, If You Can Keep It?
On Tuesday, June 26, 2018 the Hoover Institution and the Foundation for Constitutional Government invited scholars and journalists to discuss the theory and practice of American liberalism.
About the event
Is the Madisonian project of republican self-government in disrepair? Is liberal democracy sustainable? Recent years have seen countless books and articles declaring the failure of classical liberalism — some by liberalism’s proponents, and some by its critics.
How should we understand American liberalism, in the Founders’ time and in our own?
The Hoover Institution and the Foundation for Constitutional Government are pleased to invite you to an event on liberalism in theory and in practice.
The half-day conference will feature keynote remarks by Harvey Mansfield, a Hoover Institution senior fellow and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University.
Two board members, James Ceaser and Bill Kristol, and two JMC faculty partners, Mark Blitz and Harvey Mansfield, will speak at the event.
Videos from the events
Panel I: American Liberalism in Theory
Mark Blitz, Claremont McKenna College
James Ceaser, Hoover Institution and the University of Virginia
Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard
Moderator: Adam White, Hoover Institution and George Mason University
Panel II: American Liberalism in Practice
(Video TBA)
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic and CNN
John McCormack, The Weekly Standard
Moderator: Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard
Keynote Address: “The Republican Form of Government in The Federalist”
Harvey Mansfield, Hoover Institution and Harvard University
Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government, studies and teaches political philosophy. He has written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government, in defense of a defensible liberalism and in favor of a Constitutional American political science. He has also written on the discovery and development of the theory of executive power, and has translated three books of Machiavelli’s and (with the aid of his wife) Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. His book on manliness has just been published. He was Chairman of the Government Department from 1973-1977, has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. He won the Joseph R. Levenson award for his teaching at Harvard, received the Sidney Hook Memorial award from the National Association of Scholars, and in 2004 accepted a National Humanities Medal from the President. He has hardly left Harvard since his first arrival in 1949, and has been on the faculty since 1962.
Learn more about Harvey Mansfield >>
James W. Ceaser serves on the board of the Jack Miller Center and is Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1976. 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.
Learn more about James Ceaser >>
William Kristol is a member of JMC’s Board of Directors and the editor at large of The Weekly Standard, is a regular on ABC’s This Week and on ABC’s special events and election coverage, and appears frequently on other leading political commentary shows. Before starting The Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. He served as editor for 21 years.
Learn more about Bill Kristol >>
Mark Blitz is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy and director of the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at Claremont McKenna College, and a fellow of the Claremont Institute. He is the author of Plato’s Political Philosophy (Johns Hopkins University Press), Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life (Rowman & Littlefield), and Heidegger’s Being and Time and the Possibility of Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press), and coeditor, along with William Kristol, of Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield (Rowman & Littlefield).
Learn more about Mark Blitz >>
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