Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler

Professor of Government, Berry College

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.rnrnLawler served on President Bush's Council on Bioethics from 2004 – 09. His most recent book, Modern and American Dignity, is available from ISI Books.rnrnFollow him on Twitter @peteralawler.

There’s a lot of talk on BIG THINK about evolutionary explanations of this or that human behavior.  They’re all pretty fascinating, although far from completely convincing. Darwinian explanations, for what […]
1. The study of great books is usually contrasted with the use of textbooks and other technical books. It is contrasted, in other words, with study of the studies that […]
Three books showed up this week with chapters by ME in them.  Even without those chapters, each would still be a fabulous (although somewhat diminished) book.  So as not to […]
The good news is, of course, is that the old are living longer and healthier than ever.  But, as I explained, the news in not all good for us old guys in […]
So it turns out there are actually three outstanding holiday movies–TRUE GRIT, THE KING’S SPEECH, and THE FIGHTER. True Grit is, as I’ve said, very ambitious and philosophically pretentious.  It […]
1. The Tea Partiers–and many other conservatives–distinguish between the view of our Founders (good) and that of the Progressives (bad).  The Progressives (beginning around the turn of the 20th century) […]
So my “True Grit” post got a lot of response (unfortunately not below) on Facebook and by email and all that–mostly critical.  One particularly astute critic–Ken Masugi–accused me of being in […]