Delba Winthrop Award

Rasoul Namazi is an Iranian political theorist and historian of Islamic and Western thought, currently Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Duke Kunshan University, China and Assistant Professor of the Practice of Global Studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Trained at the University of Tehran Center, Paris-Sorbonne, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he was a visiting fellow at the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago & Alexander von Humboldt fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. A laureate of Prix Raymond Aron 2015 for his work on John Locke, Namazi explores topics ranging from early modern political philosophy (esp. Machiavelli & Locke) to Islamic political thought (esp. the Qur'an, Alfarabi, Averroes, Persian Political Thought). His current research focus is the comparative study of Islamic and Western political thought. Namazi’s book titled Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought is a comprehensive study of Leo Strauss’s writings on Islamic political thought. He is currently working on a book-length manuscript on early Islamic political thought and theology.

Rita Koganzon is assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on the themes of education, childhood, authority, and the family in historical and contemporary political thought. Her first book, Liberal States, Authoritarian Families: Childhood and Education in Early Modern Thought, examines the justifications for authority over children from Jean Bodin to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and explores how and why Locke and Rousseau departed from their absolutist predecessors by refusing to model the family on the state but nonetheless preserved authority – even extreme authority – over children within the family for the sake of the liberty of adults. Her research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Review of Politics, and the History of Education Quarterly, as well as in several edited volumes, and she contributes reviews and essays to the Hedgehog Review,National Affairs, The Point, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others.

Dustin Sebell is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, where he studies and teaches the history of political philosophy, especially classical political philosophy. Previously, he was Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University. His first book, The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science, was published in 2016 by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and his writing on Aristotle has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science.

Thomas W. Merrill is an Associate Professor of Government and Associate Director of the Political Theory Institute in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He is the author of David Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and of journal articles in the Review of Politics, Polity, and Perspectives on Political Science. He is the co-editor of Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver: Honoring the Work of Leon R. Kass (with Yuval Levin and Adam Shulman) and Human Dignity and Bioethics (with Edmund Pellegrino and Adam Schulman). He has an A.B. from the University of Chicago and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, has held fellowships with the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University and the American Enterprise Institute, and was on the staff of the President’s Council on Bioethics between 2007 and 2009.

Hugh Liebert is an associate professor of American politics in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. He received his BA from Harvard University and his MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His primary areas of interest are the history of political thought and American politics and foreign policy. Liebert is the author of Plutarch’s Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He has also edited several volumes: Executive Power in Theory and Practice, Thinking Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Challenges to U.S. Foreign Policy, American Grand Strategy and the Future of U.S. Landpower, What Is the Worst That Can Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management, and Confronting Inequality: Wealth, Rights, and Power. His articles have appeared in History of Political Thought, Review of Politics, and Armed Forces & Society. He is currently writing a book on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, tentatively titled Religion Around Gibbon, and scheduled to appear from Pennsylvania State University Press in 2018.

David Leibowitz is the Harry M. Clor Associate Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College. Before coming to Kenyon, he taught political philosophy at Michigan State University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University. Professor Leibowitz's book, The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato's Apology (Cambridge University Press, 2010), won the 2011 Delba Winthrop Award. He is currently working on a larger study of Plato's "Phaedo," "Parmenides," "Symposium" and "Apology," dialogues tracing Socrates' development from youthful natural scientist to mature political philosopher.

Ross J. Corbett holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law. His publications have explored issues in Locke, Aristotle, emergency powers, the rule of law, McCarthyism, the Alien Tort Statute, Bivens suits arising from the war on terrorism, and the importance of liberal education. He was a postdoctoral fellow with the Political Theory Project at Brown University, an assistant professor at Northern Illinois University, and a chambers law clerk for the Hon. Milton I. Shadur. He currently practices law in Chicago.

Ioannis D. Evrigenis is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Classics at Tufts University, where he also supervises a digital variorum edition of Jean Bodin's Les six livres de la république. He received the 2009 Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science for his book Fear of Enemies and Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 2008). His most recent book is Images of Anarchy: The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes's State of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Bryan Garsten is Professor of Political Science and the Humanities, and Chair of the Humanities Program at Yale University. He is the author of Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2006) as well as articles on political rhetoric and deliberation, the meaning of representative government, the relationship of politics and religion, and the place of emotions in political life. Garsten is now finishing a book called The Heart of a Heartless World that examines the ethical, political and religious core of early nineteenth century liberalism in the United States and France. He has also edited Rousseau, the Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, a collection of essays by the Rousseau scholar Robert Wokler (Princeton University Press, 2012). His writings have won various awards, including the First Book Prize of the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. His work in the classroom earned him the 2008 Poorvu Family Prize for Interdisciplinary Teaching. He has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies for Yale’s major in Ethics, Politics and Economics and the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Political Science.

Linda R. Rabieh teaches political philosophy at MIT in the Concourse Program, an interdisciplinary program in the humanities and sciences, as well as in Political Science. Her book, Plato and the Virtue of Courage, was the inaugural winner of the Delba Winthrop Mansfield prize for a first book in political theory. In addition to her work on Plato, she has written articles on Maimonides, Leo Strauss, and the ancient view of ethics in war. Her current research interests include Plato’s treatment of the education and public role of women in the Laws and the different understandings of reason in ancient and modern political philosophy. In 2016, she was the recipient of MIT’s Department of Undergraduate Education’s Infinite Mile award.