Bryan Garsten

Bryan Garsten's picture
Professor of Humanities and of Political Science
+1 (203) 436-3696

Bio

Bryan Garsten is Professor of Political Science and Humanities. His award-winning book Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Harvard) delves into the history of philosophical thought about the promises and pitfalls of rhetorical speech in politics and argues for the benefits of a politics of persuasion. His recent writings investigate and respond to some of the deepest questions about liberalism that have been posed by its critics; his essay, “A Liberalism of Refuge” was listed by The Journal of Democracy as one of its most-read articles of 2024. His new manuscript, The Heart of a Heartless World, under contract with Harvard Press, explores dilemmas of liberal thought in eighteenth and nineteenth-century political thought.

Professor Garsten has written widely on a range of topics including representative government and popular sovereignty, Aristotle’s political and rhetorical thought, Benjamin Constant’s liberalism and its relation to religion, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He is also the editor of a volume of Robert Wokler’s essays, Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment and their Legacies (Princeton) and, with Benjamin Barasch and David Bromwich, a forthcoming volume of essays called Humanistic Judgment: Ten Experiments in Reading (Yale).

Professor Garsten has long been interested in experiments in liberal education and in how colleges and universities can encourage a more thoughtful public discourse. He coordinated the creation of a common curriculum for Yale-NUS College in Singapore and was lead-writer of an influential report, A New Community of Learning, about how that project understood the purposes of liberal education today. He chaired Yale’s Humanities Program, revitalized its link to its alumni, and set it on a path to successfully expand both the Directed Studies program and the number of majors in the Humanities Program. A past member of the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education and the Harvard Higher Education Leaders Forum, he frequently presents at conferences about liberal education and its civic importance. He is a member of the Alliance for Civics in the Academy and of the Civic Collaboratory of Citizens University. At Yale, he is the founding director of Citizens Thinkers Writers, a civic thought program for New Haven high school students and Yale undergraduates that will celebrate its tenth anniversary in 2025-26. He is the founding Director of the Yale Center for Civic Thought.

 

Contact

115 Prospect Street, Rosenkranz Hall, Room 422
1(203) 436-3696
bryan.garsten@yale.edu

Education

  • Ph.D, Harvard University, 2003

  • M. Phil, Cambridge University, 1997

  • A.B, Harvard College, 1996

Articles