Gregory Collins

Bio

Gregory M. Collins is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University. His 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. Greg’s scholarly and teaching interests include the history of political thought, the philosophical and ethical implications of political economy, American political development, constitutional theory and practice, and the political theory of abolition. He has published or has forthcoming articles on Burke’s economic thought in Review of Politics; Adam Smith’s imperial political and economic thought in History of Political Thought; Burke’s and Smith’s views on Britain’s East India Company and monopoly in Journal of the History of Economic Thought; Frederick Douglass’ constitutional theory in American Political Thought; Burke’s plan for the abolition of the slave trade in Slavery & Abolition; and Burke’s intellectual relationship with Leo Strauss and the Straussian political tradition in Perspectives on Political Science.

Greg won the 2020 Novak Award, awarded annually by the Acton Institute to one young scholar who conducts research on the intersection of liberty and virtue. His current book project is a study of the idea of civil society in African-American political, social, and economic thought.

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

• “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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