Gregory Collins

Bio

Gregory M. Collins is a Lecturer in the Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics and Department of Political Science at Yale University. He is also the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the EP&E Program. Greg’s book on Edmund Burke’s economic thought, titled Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. His scholarly and teaching interests include political theory, the intellectual origins of liberalism and conservatism, the philosophical and ethical foundations of capitalism, constitutional theory and practice, and African-American political thought. Greg has published peer-reviewed articles and chapters on Burke, Adam Smith, Aristotle, Frederick Douglass, F.A. Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Britain’s East India Company, and the political philosophy of taxation. His popular writings can be found in Fusion, Law  & Liberty, Modern Age, National Affairs, National Review, and University Bookman. Greg’s current book project is a study of the idea of civil society in early African-American political thought.

Greg won the Buckley Institute’s 2024 Lux et Veritas Faculty Prize, awarded annually to a Yale faculty member who promotes intellectual variety in and out of the classroom; and the Acton Institute’s 2020 Novak Award, awarded annually to one junior scholar who conducts research on the intersection of liberty and virtue. Greg received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from The Catholic University of America in 2017 and his B.A. in Political Science from UMass Amherst in 2009. He is married to his college sweetheart and has two young daughters (with a third on the way!). In his free time Greg enjoys rooting for Boston professional sports teams, playing Scrabble and chess, and beating his students at pickup basketball.

Contact

gregory.collins@yale.edu

Education

• Ph.D. in Politics, from The Catholic University of America, awarded May 13, 2017
• M.A. in Politics, from The Catholic University of America, awarded May 17, 2014
• B.A. in Political Science (Phi Beta Kappa), UMass Amherst, awarded May 23, 2009

Awards

• Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prize, Heritage Foundation, June 18, 2024
• Lux et Veritas Faculty Prize, Buckley Institute, May 13, 2024
• Novak Award, Acton Institute, September 21, 2020
• Leonard P. Liggio Memorial Fellowship, The Philadelphia Society, 2017

Articles

• “Conservatism and Adam Smith.” Tensions in the Political Economy of Adam Smith (forthcoming 2025).
• “The Influence of Edmund Burke in the Thought of Keynes and Hayek.” Cambridge Journal of Economics (forthcoming 2025).
• “Frederick Douglass, Common Good Constitutionalism, and Civil Society”, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol 22, No. 1, 2024
• “Tickets of Despotism’: Edmund Burke on the Assignats, Abstract Theory, and the French Revolution,” The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money Chapter, pp 197-223, June 28, 2024
• “The Moderation We Need”,  National Review, October 2, 2023
• “Eric Voegelin on the Constitutional and Metaphysical Foundations of Property Rights in U.S. Supreme Court Jurisprudence.” Political Science Reviewer (forthcoming)
• “Spontaneous Order and Civilization.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 48 (2022): 386-415.
• “Telos and Markets.” Journal of Markets & Morality 24 (2021): 39-53.
• “Adam Smith on the Navigation Acts and the Anglo-American Imperial Relationship.” History of Political Thought, 43 (2022): 273-304.
• “Edmund Burke on Slavery and the Slave Trade.” Slavery & Abolition, 40 (2019): 494-521.
• “The Limits of Mercantile Administration: Adam Smith and Edmund Burke on Britain’s East India Company.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Volume 41, Issue 3, September 2019 , pp. 369-392.
• “Burke, Strauss, and the Straussians.” Perspectives on Political Science 48 (2019): 192-209.
• “Beyond Politics and Natural Law: The Anticipation of New Originalist Tenets in the Constitutional Thought of Frederick Douglass.” American Political Thought 6 (2017): 574-609.
• “Edmund Burke on the Question of Commercial Intercourse in the Eighteenth Century.” Review of Politics 79 (2017): 565-95.

Book chapters and Symposia Contributions

• Book symposium. “The Berenstain Bears and Property Ownership in the Modern Age.” Mark T. Mitchell, Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class, 2022, in Political Science Reviewer (forthcoming).
• “The Complexity of Society, the Displacement of Voluntary Associations, and the Growth of the State.” In The Political Philosophy of Taxation: A History from the Enlightenment to the Present Singapore: Springer, 2022
• “Tickets of Despotism’: Edmund Burke on the Assignats, Abstract Theory, and the French Revolution,” The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money Chapter, pp 197-223, June 28, 2024
• “Response to Symposiasts.” Symposium on Gregory Collins’ Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy. Cosmos + Taxis 9 (2021): 57-75. 
• Book symposium response. Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy. Perspectives on Political Science 52 (2023): 82-87

• Book symposium response. Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy. Political Science Reviewer 45 (2021): 601-18.

Book Reviews

• Why Not Moderation?: Letters to Young Radicals, by Aurelian Craiutu. National Review, 2023 (forthcoming).
• Smithian Morals, by Daniel B. Klein. University Bookman, 2023.
• Black Liberation Through the Marketplace: Hope, Heartbreak, and the Promise of America, by Rachel S. Ferguson and Marcus M. Witcher. University Bookman, 2022.
• Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence, by Greg Weiner. Modern Age 62 (2020): 55-58.
• Edmund Burke & the British Empire in the West Indies: Wealth, Power, & Slavery, by P.J. Marshall. Studies in Burke and His Time 29 (2020): 106-16.
• Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory, by Lisa Herzog. The Owl of Minerva 46 (2015): 137-145.

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