In the pantheon of intellectual giants of modernconservatism, standing first among equals is the late professor Harry Jaffa. Jaffa, who influenced generations of students from his academic perch at Claremont Graduate University, might have been the 20th century’s greatest scholar on the thought of Abraham Lincoln. Jaffa, who along with JWI Founder & Co-Director Hadley Arkes was a student of the great Leo Strauss, produced two seminal books on Lincoln. First, in 1958, he gave us Crisis of the House Divided, a close analysis of the Lincoln Douglas debates, andthen forty two years later, A New Birth of Freedom, which was devoted to the larger project of the causes of the Civil War, the Election of 1860, and the secession thereafter. A former student of Jaffa, and close confidant, Edward Erler, has now come forth with a new book Prophetic Statesmanshipfrom Encounter Books that Jaffa himself entrusted Erler to write as a follow-on to A New Birth of Freedom after Jaffa died about a decade ago. We are deeply pleased then to be joined by Prof. Erler for a wide ranging discussion of this important new work on Lincoln, with a relevance to theissues at the heart of our present way of life that is quite striking. 

Erler is Professor of Political Science emeritus fromCalifornia State University, San Bernardino, where he taught Political Philosophy and Constitutional Law, and served as Department Chairman from 1984-1991. He is the Author of numerous books and law reviews and professionaljournals, among the most recent, are “From Subjects to Citizens: the Social Contract Origins of American Citizenship”; “Marbury v. Madison and the Progressive Transformation of Judicial Power”;. He received a B.A. in Political Science from San Jose State University, on a grant from the G.I. Bill for services rendered, a M.A. and Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School. He has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center and served as Director of theBicentennial for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Purchase Prophetic StatesmanRead more of Prof. Erlier at The American Mind