By Ken Masugi Posted August 27, 2004

The Claremont Institute will sponsor 10 panels from September 2-5 in Chicago on some of the most important topics in contemporary politics and political science. The event is the annual convention of the American Political Science Association, and it will be held at the Hilton and Charter House hotels. Topics include neo-conservatism and foreign policy, same-sex marriage and the Constitution, the legacies of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the Bush Administration on immigration and affirmative action, and Protestantism and the American founding.

Among the participants, besides senior Claremont Institute staff and fellows, are prominent academics and authors such as Francis Fukuyama, Philip Hamburger, Judge Michael McConnell, Mackubin Owens, John O'Sullivan, Peter Lawler, Michael Zuckert, Matthew Spalding, Carol Swain, Peter Kirsanow, Susan Shell, Ken Weinstein, and Paul Cantor. They are joined by a diverse array of other scholars, established and junior. The panels promise to offer spirited, thoughtful discussion of both topics of the day and the eternal questions.

Institute Fellows and staff including Ed Erler, Harry Jaffa, Brian Janiskee, Brian Kennedy, Charles Kesler, John Marini, R.J. Pestritto, and Thomas G. West will be making their always-engaging contributions to the debate.

These panels are one of the oldest projects of the Claremont Institute. We have come to address our fellow academics—often a hopeless cause—with the intent of getting the most reflective of them, those who care most about the peril our country is in, to use their intellectual prowess in service of the highest ideals of out country. At the very least we can expose the suppositions and fallacies in their work. Most political scientists have long since abandoned this patriotic cause, obsessed by abstruse and irrelevant methodologies or fanatical ideologies.

Our book of essays based on last year's conference, The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science: Transforming the American Regime, will appear in 2005. The authors will explain how political science was born out of a belief that the forces of history had permitted rational bureaucracy to replace statesmanship. This Progressive revolution would herald a new era in which the old Constitution would be replaced by the "rational" state.

Thus the Claremont Institute insists on studying politics in the tradition of the heights of political philosophy and statesmanship. This means rigorous examination of the deepest thinkers on politics, from Plato and Aristotle to Leo Strauss, as well as the greatest statesmen, from Cicero to Churchill. Above all, we seek to highlight the thought and action of America's Founders and Abraham Lincoln, as they have endowed us with the political philosophy the Declaration of Independence embodies and their noble example of true statesmanship that applied this political philosophy.

We always remind our audiences that we must look to the American Founding in order to apply these principles of politics and statesmanship to the present. And so we examine current politics, analyze court cases, and evaluate the most significant recent books. We ceaselessly call for a sober examination of the strategies of America's enemies abroad, from the American Revolution through the war on terrorism. Our presentations challenge the implicit and explicit progressive, leftist, and relativistic assumptions that too much of the academy has absorbed. Thus we are obliged to make our panels a scene of controversy, where sharp differences of principle emerge and minds are clarified.

The popularity of the Claremont Institute's panels has led to the addition of more panels by the APSA and other panel sponsors on the serious study of political philosophy and politics. Our influence is thus felt not merely on our own panels but throughout the annual meeting. Thus our scholarship enriches the professional lives of those who study and teach politics in our universities, conduct research in our think tanks, and turn theory into practice in our government.

Our panels, frequently covered by C-SPAN, are among the most heavily attended of the four-day annual meetings of the American Political Science Association. A list of them can be found on our website. For questions concerning registration for the conference please inquire at the APSA's website.