Freedom in American Political Thought: An Online Summer Course for College Credit

Joseph Prud’homme holds the Burton Family Chair in Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College, where he teaches political science and directs the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture. He received his doctorate from Princeton University, where he studied in the Interdepartmental Program in Political Philosophy, with additional specialization in constitutional law and religious studies. He was awarded a fellowship at Harvard University, where he studied at the Harvard Law School and served as a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He has also held a visiting fellowship at the University of Oxford. Dr. Prud’homme is the author of Religion and Politics in America from the Colonial Period to the Civil War and coauthor of Curriculum and the Culture Wars. He is a frequent guest lecturer nationally and internationally.

Wilfred M. McClay has served for nearly a decade as the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. In the fall he will join the history faculty at Hillsdale College. McClay’s most recent book, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, received ISI’s 2020 Conservative Book of the Year award. His other books include A Student’s Guide to U.S. History (ISI Books), The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, and Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America. McClay served on the National Council on the Humanities and is a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semiquincentennial, which has been charged with planning the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. An ISI alumnus, he is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University.

Arthur Milikh serves as executive director of the Center for the American Way of Life at the Claremont Institute. Previously he was associate director of the Center for American Studies and AWC Family Foundation Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. There, his work focused on the tradition of American political thought and on the freedom of speech. Milikh has written for National Affairs, City Journal, Real Clear Politics, the Claremont Review of Books, American Greatness, and the Daily Signal. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and is working toward his PhD in philosophy at Catholic University.

Cara Rogers is assistant professor of history at Ashland University, where she teaches courses on the Age of Enlightenment, American history from the colonial era until the Civil War, and Thomas Jefferson. Previously, she taught at Collin College in Dallas and at Rice University. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and has a master’s degree in history from the University of Texas at Dallas and a PhD from Rice University. 

Thomas G. West holds the Paul Ermine Potter and Dawn Tibbetts Potter Professorship in Politics at Hillsdale College. Previously he taught for many years at the University of Dallas. Dr. West is the author of The Political Theory of the American Founding—the core text for this course—as well as Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America. He is a director and senior fellow of the Claremont Institute.

Daniel McCarthy is vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and editor of ISI’s journal Modern Age. He is responsible for the ISI’s college journalism programs, which support independent campus publications and provide internships and fellowships to outstanding student reporters, writers, and editors. He has an extensive background in journalism, including as a columnist for The Spectator and past editor of The American Conservative. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, The National Interest, First Things, Reason, and a wide range of other publications. Before coming to ISI, he was director of the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program at The Fund for American Studies. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (where he edited a Collegiate Network paper) and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

John G. Grove is managing editor of Law & Liberty and author of John C. Calhoun’s Theory of Republicanism. He previously taught political science at Lincoln Memorial University.