Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler is Dana Professor of Government and former chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College. He serves as executive editor of the journal Perspectives on Political Science, and has been chair of the politics and literature section of the American Political Science Association. He also served on the editorial board of the new bilingual critical edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He has written or edited fifteen books and over 200 articles and chapters in a wide variety of venues. He was the 2007 winner of the Weaver Prize in Scholarly Letters. Lawler served on President Bush's Council on Bioethics from 2004-09. He writes Big Think's conservative blog Rightly Understood, and his most recent book, Modern and American Dignity, is available from ISI Books.

RECENT POSTS BY PETER LAWLER

• Having “issues” with issues

  So here’s a funny article on the sheer silliness and passive-aggressive hostility of the jargon that dominates the worlds of management, consultants, marketing, and all that.… MORE >>

• Colorado’s conservative affirmative-action scheme

  So the University of Colorado has hired my friend Steve Hayward to be a visiting professor in conservative thought and policy.… MORE >>

• Higher education’s inclusively virtual future

  Nathan Harden writes with his characteristic techno-confidence that most higher education will be online soon enough.… MORE >>

• Clear eyes, full hearts, Romney lost

  The Democrats, at their convention, stood so stridently for the rights of the liberated single woman that they offered the Republicans the opportunity to counter with a defense of the moral virtue of ordinary Americans devoted to God, family, country, and worthwhile work well done.… MORE >>

• Big Idea: The hell of pure possibility

  Here’s a thought of the novelist Walker Percy’s searching character Will Barrett in The Last Gentleman:… MORE >> For until this moment he had lived in a state of pure possibility, not knowing what sort of man he was or what he must do, and supposing therefore that he must be all men and do everything.

• Allan Bloom and souls without longing

  So I’ve gotten a lot (meaning several) emails complaining that I haven’t gotten around to keeping my promise of talking about Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind… MORE >>.

• Liberal arts: Containing both a movie review and a reflection

  So, a few of you have asked, why have you stopped talking about movies?… MORE >>

• Long live Andy of Mayberry!

  . . . in reruns, of course. So I realize I’ve been pretty short on pop culture commentary lately.… MORE >>

• Tale of two bosses: Chris Christie and Bruce Springsteen

  There are so many great articles in the July/August issue of the Atlantic… MORE >> that I could pretty much blog on it alone for the rest of year.

• Mayor Bloomberg, or Nanny Bloomberg?

  The nonpartisan yet aggressively reforming mayor of NYC wants to ban sugary drinks of more than 16 ounces from being sold in various public establishments.… MORE >>