Eric M. Nelson | |
---|---|
Born | |
Title | Robert M. Beren Professor of Government |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Harvard University (AB) Trinity College, Cambridge (MPhil, PhD) |
Thesis | 'The Greek Tradition in Early-Modern Republican Thought' (2002) |
Doctoral advisor | Quentin Skinner |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Political philosophy,government |
Sub-discipline | Thomas Hobbes,American Revolution,English Revolution,Judaism and politics,republicanism,Age of Enlightenment,Hebrew republic [1] |
Eric Matthew Nelson (born August 13,1977) is an American historian and Professor of Government at Harvard University.
Eric Nelson was born in 1977 and grew up in New York City. According to Harvard Magazine ,he went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every week as a child. [2]
Nelson attended Harvard College,where he was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and graduated summa cum laude. [1] His thesis,entitled The Reluctant Humanist:Thomas Hobbes and the Classical Historians won the Hoopes Prize,an award given for exceptional undergraduate theses. [3] While at Harvard,he was a regular columnist for The Harvard Crimson , [4] where he often wrote about the parallels between history and modern day.
After graduating from Harvard,he attended graduate school in the United Kingdom as a Marshall Scholar. [3] Nelson earned an M.Phil. from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge in 2000,where he wrote a thesis on the Greek influence on English Republicanism. Two years later,he earned his Ph.D. from the same college at Cambridge.
Nelson is Jewish, [5] and his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. He served as the Director of the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies from 2012 through 2015. He reads seven languages—English,Greek,Latin,Hebrew,French,Italian,and German—and speaks four of them. [3] [2]
After earning his Ph.D.,Nelson taught for another year at Cambridge before returning to Harvard as a Junior Fellow in 2004. By 2009,he was named the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government,and was granted tenure just one year later at the age of 32. [3] In 2014,he was named the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government. He has also been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. [6]
He has published four books since returning to Harvard and is working on a fifth that will explore theology and contemporary liberal philosophy. [7]
Nelson has taught classes at Harvard that cover topics including Thomas Hobbes,the American Revolution,the English Revolution,Jewish political tradition,monarchy,republicanism,and the Enlightenment.
According to Diana Muir,Nelson is "one of a group of scholars engaged in the enterprise of re-evaluating the origins of modern political theory". [8] According to Nathan Perl-Rosenthal,Nelson's Hebrew Republic "demonstrates unforgettably that we need to understand piety to comprehend politics." [9]
Nelson,along with Harry Lewis,Margo Seltzer,and Richard Thomas,wrote an op-ed expressing their opposition to Harvard's proposed policy to ban members of final clubs and other officially unrecognized social clubs from holding captaincies or receiving endorsements for top fellowships. [10]
John Locke was an English philosopher and physician,widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists,following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon,Locke is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers,as well as the American Revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Internationally,Locke’s political-legal principles continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law.
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher,considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan,in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy,Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields,including history,jurisprudence,geometry,theology,and ethics,as well as philosophy in general.
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Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner is a British intellectual historian. He is regarded as one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. He has won numerous prizes for his work,including the Wolfson History Prize in 1979 and the Balzan Prize in 2006. Between 1996 and 2008 he was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. He is currently the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities and Co-director of The Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London.
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Classical republicanism,also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism,is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity,especially such classical writers as Aristotle,Polybius,and Cicero. Classical republicanism is built around concepts such as civil society,civic virtue and mixed government.
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The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts,including painting,architecture,and music deliver customarily six lectures. The lectures are usually dated by the academic year in which they are given,though sometimes by just the calendar year.
Stephen Alan Marglin is an American economist. He is the Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University,a fellow of the Econometric Society,and a founding member of the World Economics Association.
Arihiro Hoeber Fukuda was a Japanese historian who was an associate professor at the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law and specialised in the history of Western political thought,particularly the republican the ideas of James Harrington,Thomas Hobbes,David Hume,and NiccolòMachiavelli.
Harvard Student Agencies,Inc. (HSA) is the largest student-run company in the world,employing more than 600 Harvard undergraduates each year,and paying more than $1.7M in student wages annually. Founded in 1957,HSA is a multimillion-dollar corporation that provides Harvard University students with meaningful opportunities for employment and hands-on business education. Its mission is "to educate,empower,and inspire Harvard College students with meaningful employment opportunities and hands-on business experience." Student managers lead all aspects of the operations and strategy behind HSA's 12 businesses,which range from tutoring to retail,to coding,to tours,including HSA Cleaners &Dorm Essentials,and The Harvard Shop.
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge,Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor,the Puritan clergyman John Harvard,it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world.
The Hebrew Republic,also “De Republica Hebraeorum”,and also “Respublica Hebraeorum”,is an early modern concept in political theory in which Christian scholars regarded the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution framing a perfect and republican government designed by God for the children of Israel.
Danielle Susan Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also the Director of the Edmond &Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 2015,Allen was UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,New Jersey. Allen is the daughter of political scientist William B. Allen.
Dudley Community is an alternative to Harvard College's 12 Houses. The Dudley Community serves nonresident undergraduate students,visiting undergraduate students,and undergraduates living in the Dudley Co-op. In 2019,the Dudley Community was formed,reflecting the administrative split between the undergraduate and graduate programs that were under Dudley House since 1991. The student center for the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science is based in Lehman Hall;the building houses a dining hall,library,game room,computer lab,coffee shop,lockers,and common rooms. Affiliated undergraduates have access to Dudley House advisers,programs,intramural athletics,and organized social events.
The Harvard Crimson fencing team is the intercollegiate fencing team for Harvard University located in Cambridge,Massachusetts. The team competes in the Ivy League within the NCAA Division I. The university first fielded a team in 1888.
The Harvard Graduate Council(HGC),and originally founded as the HGC is the centralized student government organization for the twelve graduate schools of Harvard University. Representing the interests of more than 15,000 Harvard graduate students,HGC is responsible for advocating student concerns to the University administrators,including the President of Harvard University,as well as the Provost and the Deans. HGC is also tasked with organizing large university-wide initiatives and events,managing and providing funding for university-wide student groups (USGs),as well as representing the Harvard graduate student population during conferences with other Ivy League universities and external organizations. In addition,HGC collaborates with its undergraduate counterpart,the Harvard Undergraduate Council (UC). The HGC Seal is formed by 13 different Harvard seals. At the center is the main Harvard University seal,which itself is surrounded by the 12 smaller seals of individual graduate schools.