The Clough Center’s John Marshall Lectures in Political Philosophy are sponsored by the Collins Family Foundation, of Delaplane, Va., which operates under the stewardship of Dr. David C. Collins, founder of Learning Tree International, and Mary Collins. The lecture series is named in honor of the great Chief Justice (1801-1835) of the U.S. Supreme Court, and American Founder, John Marshall (1755-1835). Dr. and Mrs. Collins have a longstanding interest in Marshall’s life and work. For over twenty years, they have funded the preservation and restoration of Marshall's childhood home in Markham, Virginia, which has served as an educational resource visited, to date, by some 42,000 young people. 

The John Marshall Lecture Series is administered by Political Science Professor Robert Faulkner, who is author of (amongst many other works) The Jurisprudence of John Marshall (Princeton, 1968; Greenwood Press,1980) and of a new edition of John Marshall’s Life of George Washington (Liberty Fund, 2000).

Spring 2012 Programs

Kennedy and Liberalism
James Piereson, William E. Simon Foundation
Monday, March 19        
10 Stone Ave, Room 201 | Noon
Invitation Only


Why Strauss Wrote on Xenophon
Christopher Nadon, Claremont McKenna College
Thursday, April 12
Gasson 205 | 4:30 P.M.

Fall 2011 Programs

Giving an Account of the West: Political History and Political Philosophy
Pierre Manent, L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Tuesday, November 1
Gasson 100 | 4:30 p.m.

Some Reflections on the Current Western Predicament
Luncheon with Pierre Manent
Wednesday, November 2
10 Stone Ave, Room 201
Invitation Only

Reason and Revelation
Luncheon with Pierre Manent
Thursday, November 3   
McGuinn 334 Conference Room
Invitation Only

About the Presenter

Pierre Manent is director of studies at the L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, France. He was a leading figure in the French rediscovery of political philosophy in the 1970's and 80's after the long hegemony of Marxist and postmodernist ("post-structuralist") currents of thought. In 1978, with Raymond Aron and others, he helped found the French quarterly Commentaire. Manent's earlier books (Naissances de la politique moderne, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, the anthology Les Libéraux, and The City and Man) seek to understand the political and theological origins of modern liberalism, including its spiritual costs and benefits. His more recent work centers on the health and development of modern liberal democracies. Works such as A World beyond Politics? (2001) and La raison des nations (2006) analyze the "depoliticization" of contemporary Europe and make Manent a significant critic of the European project in its present form. In Les métamorphoses de la cité: Essai sur la dynamique de l'Occident (2010), Manent explores the West's four great "political forms": the city, Empire, Church, and nation, and its substitute for religion, the "religion of humanity."  Le regard politique (2010), a collection of conversations with Manent, has just appeared. Manent is currently completing a new book on Montaigne and a collection of essays on the "theological-political problem."

Preservation & Stabilization of The Hollow
This report chronicles the work Dr. Collins had done to restore the John Marshall boyhood home.