Government and International Studies
DR. PETER LAWLER
Dana Professor of Government and Chair
Biography
Peter Augustine Lawler is Dana Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College. He teaches courses in political philosophy and American politics and has won several awards from Berry for doing so.
He is executive editor of the acclaimed quarterly journal, Perspectives on Political Science and has been chair of the politics and literature section of the American Political Science Association. He also serves on the editorial board of the new bilingual critical edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and on the editorial boards of several journals. He is a member of the Society of Scholars at the Madison Center at Princeton University, and the George Washington Professor on the American founding for the Society of Cincinnati for the state of Georgia. He is also a member of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics.
He has written or edited a dozen books. His most recent include Postmodernism Rightly Understood, Aliens in America: The Strong Truth About Our Souls, Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future, and the forthcoming Homeless and at Home in America.
His American Political Rhetoric (edited with Robert Schaefer) is used in introductory American government courses at a sizeable number of colleges and universities. The fifth edition is now in print.
Lawler has published more than 175 scholarly articles, chapters, and reviews. His work has appeared in such scholarly journals as the Review of Politics, Government and Opposition, The South Atlantic Quarterly, The International Philosophical Quarterly, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Gravitas, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Polity, Journal of Politics, Modern Age, Public Integrity, The Intercollegiate Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Public Interest, Perspectives on Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, First Things, The Good Society, The New Atlantis, and Society. He is also published in more popular magazines such as The Weekly Standard, Current, The Claremont Review of Books, The University Bookman, The American Enterprise, Crisis, The American Spectator, The National Review, National Review Online, and The Mars Hill Audio Journal.
Lawler has given invited lectures at over 60 colleges and universities. He has received a large number of grants from both the Liberty Fund and the Earhart Foundation, as well as numerous other foundations. He also appeared on numerous television and radio programs throughout the country.
The Bradley Institute for the Study of Christian Culture has named Lawler the recipient of the 2007 Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters. Lawler will receive a $25,000 cash prize and deliver the keynote address at the Weaver/Ingersoll Symposium he will organize at Belmont Abbey College on Oct. 19.
The Ingersoll Prizes were created to “honor authors and scholars of abiding importance who cherish the ideals of civic order and human dignity, and to bring their works to the wider attention of readers throughout the world.” Recent winners include “culture wars” sociologist James Davison Hunter, historian Paul Johnson and philosopher and cultural critic Roger Scruton. Other past recipients include Shelby Foote and E.O. Wilson.
Contact Information:
Office: Evans 115
Telephone: (706) 233-4085
E-mail: plawler@berry.edu