Academia Tocqueville is a one-and-a-half week  summer seminar that provides an intensive introduction to the varieties of modern French conservatism. 

Born in response to the upheaval of the French Revolution, French conservatism is one of the most important intellectual traditions in Western political thought. The deepest thinkers of the French right provide an inimitable account of the social and spiritual crisis upsetting the modern world. They confront the problem of revolutionary politics and the erosion and recovery of authority. They wrestle with the nature of power, the challenges of mass democracy, and the burdens of constitutional design in difficult circumstances. Yet their insights remain relatively unknown in the Anglophone world.

Over the course of their studies  in Paris, guided by distinguished scholars and writers, participants study the liberal-conservative tradition and encounter representatives of counter-revolutionary and nationalist thought. They discover French conservatism's critical and constructive engagement with Bonapartism and Caesarism. Finally, they discover how Catholic political thinkers interacted with French conservative thought. 

Thinkers studied include Alexis de Tocqueville, Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Georges Bernanos, Charles Péguy, Simone Weil, Jacques Maritain, and more. Alongside intensive daily seminars, participants will visit some of the most important cultural sites of Paris. A weekend excursion to the Tocqueville family château in Normandy will provide a capstone experience. 

 

The program will be conducted in English. Knowledge of French is not expected.

In addition to the American and French faculty hosts listed below, guest speakers based in Paris will include François Xavier-Bellamy, Rémi Brague, Pierre Manent, alongside others.

Logistics

Location: The Seminar will take place in Paris from June 25th - July 5th, 2023  with classes in Saint-Germain-des-Près, 6e arrondissement. Accommodation will be provided a short distance from the classrooms.

Meals: All meals will be provided at the seminar, though lunches and dinners will not be provided on the afternoons and evenings when participants are free to explore Paris on their own.

Cost: A registration fee of $350 is requested for overhead purposes and represents a small fraction of the true cost of the program. Reading material will be made available free of charge to the accepted applicants a month before the seminar.

Participants are expected to arrange their own travel to Paris. They should plan to arrive on the evening of June 25th and depart on the morning of July 5th.  Some travel stipends are available to help students in financial need.

WHO SHOULD APPLY?

The seminar is open to advanced undergraduate, graduate students, & young professionals who are working in an area related to the seminar's topic. The seminar will be capped at fifteen participants.

HOW TO APPLY?

  • Submit an application containing the following to academiatocqueville@gmail.com

    • a) One-page statement of interest;

    • b) CV;

    • c) Name and contact for two references.

The application deadline for the seminar is April 21st, 2023. Applicants can expect to receive a decision by April 25th, 2023.

 - Seminar Faculty - 

Laurent Frémont

Laurent Frémont is a French political advisor. He teaches history of political thought at the Institut d’Etudes Catholiques de Paris, as well as constitutional law at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He was an advisor to François Fillon (2017 presidential candidate) and worked as an attaché at the French embassy in the United States. He holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Public Affairs from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), an MA in Political Theory at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), as well as an LLM in Public Law at La Sorbonne (Université Paris 1).

Luke Foster, Ph. D.

 Luke Foster is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of Notre Dame and a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). His research and teaching concerns American and French political thought on aristocracy, democracy, meritocracy, and education. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Excellence for the Democratic Age: Liberal Education and the Mixed Regime. His work has been published in The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, American Political Thought, and the Political Science Reviewer. He holds a BA in English and History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago (Committee on Social Thought), and has received fellowships from the France Chicago Center, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Institute for Humane Studies.

Chantal Delsol

Chantal Delsol is a political philosopher and historian of political thought. She is the author of many books and over two hundred articles. A member of l'Académie française, she is has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Prix Mousquetaire (1996), and the Prix Raymond de Boyer de Sainte-Suzanne de l'Académie française (2001). Her works have been translated into more than 15 languages. Her latest book is La fin de la Chrétienté (The End of the Christian World).

Nathan Pinkoski, DPhil

Nathan Pinkoski is Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. His research and teaching covers 20th century political thought, early modern political thought, and classical political thought. He has published in a variety of academic and popular journals, including First Things, Perspectives on Political Science, and The Review of Politics. He holds a BA (Hon) from the University of Alberta and an MPhil and DPhil in Politics: Political Theory, from the University of Oxford. He had held research fellowships and lectureships at Princeton University, the University of Toronto, and the Zephyr Institute. He recently translated Alasdair MacIntyre: une biographie intellectuelle (Alasdair MacIntyre: An Intellectual Biography), by Émile Perreau-Saussine (University of Notre Dame Press). He is a Contributing Editor for Compact: A Radical American Journal and a Senior Fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation.

Eléonore de Noüel

Eléonore de Noüel is a PhD student in political science and political theory at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, in Paris. Her research concerns the legal and political uses of the notion of human dignity in contemporary liberal regimes. She holds Masters (1 and 2) degrees in political theory from Sciences Po Paris, and a Masters degree (1) in politics, social regulations and public action from Paris-Dauphine University. She has taught theoretical sociology, ethics of war and global contemporary issues at Sciences Po and Paris-Dauphine.

 

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Edmund Burke Foundation, Morningside Institute, The European Conservative, and the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame.