Event Details

Thirty-Ninth Mitau Endowed Lecture 

Patrick J. Deneen will speak on "The Case for Illiberal Democracy" on Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 4:45pm in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall. 

Reception to follow in the Atrium of the Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center. 

Patrick J. Deneen is a professor of political science and holds the David A. Potenziani Memorial Chair of Constitutional Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to joining the faculty of Notre Dame in 2012, he taught at Princeton University (1997-2005) and Georgetown University (2005-2012), where he held the Markos and Eleni Tsakapoulos-Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies. From 2005-2007 he served as speechwriter and special assistant to the director of the U.S. Information Agency. 

Professor Deneen's intellectual interests and publications are wide-ranging, including ancient political thought, American political thought, religion and politics, and literature and politics. He has written four books and edited three others. His books include The Odyssey of Political Theory; Democratic Faith; Conserving America?; and most recently, Why Liberalism Failed, which was published in January 2018 by Yale University Press. 

In addition to publishing academic works, Professor Deneen frequently writes for journals of opinion, including First Things; The American Conservative; The Weekly Standard; The Chronicle of Higher Education; and Commonweal.