Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought

Aurelius Hall, Room 324
Office Hours Available Upon Request
724-805-2145
brad.watson@email.stvincent.edu

• Dr. Watson's CV

Dr. Watson holds the Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought. He has also held visiting faculty appointments at Princeton University and Claremont McKenna College. As Fellow in Politics and Culture at Saint Vincent’s Center for Political and Economic Thought, he directs the Center’s Government and Political Education Lecture Series and its Culture and Policy Conferences, in addition to its George Washington Fellowship Program. His teaching areas include political philosophy and American political thought and institutions.

He has authored or edited several books, including Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, Courts and the Culture Wars, Civic Education and Culture, and the The West at War (2006). He has also written in a variety of professional and general interest forums, including Armed Forces and Society, Claremont Review of Books, Encarta Encyclopedia, Modern Age, and Perspectives on Political Science. His current research interests are both theoretical and practical, including Progressive jurisprudence, liberalism and communitarianism, Western political thought and the American regime, same-sex marriage, and immigration law and policy. He has recently written, spoken, or given media interviews on each of these topics.

He is an Adjunct Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, and the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University. He is also Research Associate at the Center for the Study of American Civic Literacy, a project of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He has received fellowships from numerous national and international organizations, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Earhart Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Prior to becoming a political scientist, he practiced as a civil litigation attorney in Vancouver, Canada. He was educated in Canada at the University of British Columbia, where he received a B.A. in economics and political science, and at the Queen's University Faculty of Law, where he received an LL.B. (J.D.); in Belgium at the Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Louvain, where he received an M.Phil.; and in the United States at the Claremont Graduate University, where he received an M.A. and a Ph.D. with concentrations in political philosophy and American government.