Witherspoon Institute
2026 Summer Seminars
Held in Princeton, NJ
For rising high school juniors and seniors, undergraduates, and graduate students.
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Book Reviews
Political scientists James W. Ceaser, Andrew E. Busch, and John J. Pitney, Jr., take a hard look at the 2016 election, adding another book to their series of insightful election analyses.
By Ryan Shinkel
A new book by James Poulos reveals both the greatness and the limitations of Tocqueville.
A timely book on the thought of Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns reminds us that patriotism needs to be about ideas and principles, but it cannot only be about ideas and principles. To win—and deserve to win—elections, conservatism must also inspire love of country and serve the immediate interests of the ordinary man.
Our enslavement to technology leaves us alienated, depressed, and distracted, first of all by disrupting the cultivation of virtue in the home. Andy Crouch has written a thoughtful and practical guide for families looking to redirect their attention from technology to what really matters.
By R.J. Snell
Fr. James Martin, SJ, has attempted to build a bridge between the Catholic Church and the LGBT community, but by shirking the difficulty of confrontation, he has traded genuine encounter for a thin and generic substitute.
By Samuel Gregg
John Stuart Mill foreshadows the deeply intolerant faith and agenda of contemporary liberalism.
By Justin Dyer
It is often alleged that the American founders lacked a unified and coherent political theory. To the contrary, a recent book by Thomas West shows that the founders broadly agreed on a philosophy of natural rights, calling for both the protection of liberty and the promotion of virtue.
Nick Spencer’s recent collection of essays reminds us to appreciate the complex relationship between Christianity and modernity.
By Jon Fennell
The authors in this symposium have offered insightful analyses of Bloom’s book and the contemporary university it describes. Can what has been lost be recovered? If so, this will come through restoration of the imagination.