Faculty members who undertake teaching and research in this field are:
Professor C. Frederick Alford
Professor Charles E. Butterworth
Professor Stephen L. Elkin
Professor James M. Glass
Professor Mark Graber
Professor Ronald M. Terchek (Emeritus)
Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu
Here are short descriptions of the approaches taken by the active faculty members in the field. You may click their names to link to their individual websites:
Professor C. Frederick Alford
Professor Alford's latest project is an attempt to rethink the traditional natural law. What would happen, he asks, if we consider evil as far more than the privation of the good? What if we consider evil as the almost universal desire to destroy the good because it is good, and not me or mine? Is natural law still possible? Yes, more than ever. "Psychology of the Natural Law of Reparation: Saint Augustine, Jacques Maritain, and Melanie Klein" (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is Alford's working-through of this thesis.
Selected Publication:
Rethinking Freedom: Why freedom has lost its meaning and what can be done to save it (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
Professor Charles E. Butterworth
Charles Butterworth concentrates on the history of political philosophy, especially the ancient and medieval periods but also the modern, so as to understand better the viable answers to the questions about the best human life, the highest human good, justice, and the goal of politics set forth in that tradition. To this end, he studies the writings of the major political philosophers carefully and strives to meet them on their own terms.
Selected Publication:
Alfarabi, The Political Writings: "Selected Aphorisms" and Other Texts, edited and translated, with an introduction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
Professor James M. Glass
Professor Glass focuses on theoretical, historical, and psychological issues. He works in the area of traditional political philosophy and examines historical concepts through modern psychological, analytical frameworks. He is particularly interested in how traditional political theory confronts madness and the forces of disintegration as well as in modern group psychological formulations that clarify traditional political ideas and historical events such as the Holocaust.
Selected Publication:
Jewish resistance during the Holocaust: moral uses of violence and will (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)