SYRA Fall Lecture topic: Manliness

The Skidmore Young Republican Assembly (SYRA) welcomes Harvey C. Mansfield to campus Thursday, Nov. 15, to deliver the annual SYRA Fall Lecture. Titled "Manliness," the event begins at 7:30 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Mansfield will discuss what he calls the tragedy of "unemployed manliness" throughout today's society. It is a topic that he has explored in his latest book (the paperback version of Manliness was published in April by Yale University Press), which has drawn praise, surprise, and outrage from critics. Frank Rich of the New York Times called the work "a subtle exploration about the virtues and vices of the thymotic urge," while Theodore Dalrymple of American Enterprise argued that "Mansfield?s defense of what, politically, has become indefensible by anyone wanting to keep his reputation intact is most welcome."

Tom Qualtere '08, SYRA co-president, said, "It is a fascinating topic that in some way affects everyone at Skidmore. Dr. Mansfield is an impressive scholar whose works and translations many students have read and his rarely heard views will provide a significant balance of opinion within our community."

Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Professor of Government at Harvard University where he's taught political theory since 1962. He chaired the university's Department of Government from 1973 to 1977 and won the Joseph R. Levensen Award for Teaching.

He has written and translated many groundbreaking works on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties; on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government; in defense of a defensible liberalism and in favor of a Constitutional American political science. He has also written on the discovery and development of the theory of executive power, and has translated three books by Machiavelli. He and Delba Winthrop published a translation of de Tocqueville's Democracy in America in 2000.

Mansfield has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center. In 2004 accepted the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush. Last May, Mansfield delivered the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities in Washington D.C. Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, it is the most prestigious honor bestowed by the federal government for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

The lecture is co-sponsored by Speakers Bureau, the departments of Government and Philosophy and Religion, the First-Year Experience, the Office of Academic Affairs, the Office of Campus Life, and Young America's Foundation.