Thomas West

Thomas G. West holds the Paul Ermine Potter and Dawn Tibbetts Potter Endowed Professorship in Politics at Hillsdale College and is a senior fellow and member of the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute.

He received his B.A. at Cornell in 1967 and his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University in 1974. Prior to joining the faculty at Hillsdale, he was a Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas, where he taught from 1974 to 2011. He served in Vietnam as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1969-70. He was Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in 1988-89 and Salvatori Visiting Scholar at Claremont McKenna College from 1990-92.

His book Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) was the winner of the Bagehot Council’s Paolucci Book Award for 2000, for the best book in American history or politics.

West’s two most recent books are on the political theory of the American founders. They respond to such questions as: What is that theory? Why is it so often misunderstood? Why are today’s criticisms of the founding so often misdirected? What laws and policies secure the natural rights of the people? How have we departed from that earlier understanding over the past century or more?

He is currently engaged in studies of—and teaching courses on—the political and moral thought of Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Leo Strauss, and of American political thought after Lincoln, including progressivism and recent liberalism.

Research interests:
Political Theory of the American Founders
Moral and Political Thought