Jeffrey Polet

Jeffrey Polet
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Jeffrey Polet grew up in an immigrant household in the immigrant town of Holland MI. After twenty years of academic wandering he returned to Holland and now teaches political science at Hope College, where he also grudgingly serves as chair of the department, having unsuccessfully evaded all requests. In the interim, he continues to nurture quirky beliefs: Division III basketball is both athletically and morally superior to Division I; the Hope/Calvin rivalry is the greatest in sports; the lecture is still the best form of classroom instruction; never buy a car with less than 100,000 miles on it; putts will still lip out in heaven; bears are the incarnation of evil; Athens actually has something to do with Jerusalem; and Tombstone is a cinematic classic. His academic work has mirrored his peripatetic career. Originally trained at the Catholic University of America in German philosophy and hermeneutical theory, he has since gravitated to American Political Thought. He still occasionally writes about European thinkers such as Michel Foucault or the great Max Weber, but mostly is interested in the relationship between theological reflection and political formation in the American context. In the process of working on a book on John Marshall for The Johns Hopkins University Press, he became more sensitive to the ways in which centralized decision-making undid local communities and autonomy. He has also written on figures such as William James and the unjustly neglected Swedish novelist Paer Lagerkvist. A knee injury and arthritis eliminated daily basketball playing, and he now spends his excess energy annoying his saintly wife and their three children, two of whom are off to college. Expressions of sympathy for the one who remains can be posted in the comments section. He doesn’t care too much for movies, but thinks opera is indeed the Gesamtkuntswerk, that the music of Gustav Mahler is as close as human beings get to expressing the ineffable, that God listens to Mozart in his spare time, and that Bach is history’s greatest genius.

Recent Essays

Two Plus Cheers For Small Houses

In the past two generations, the average house size has nearly doubled, while family sizes have decreased. Chris Wiley, a frequent contributor here, tells...

Kauffman for Christmas

http://www.cpjustice.org/public/capital_commentary/article/1315

Berry on University Censors

http://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article47230635.html

Dispatch from Paris

From Stephen Heiner, a Porcher in Paris: https://fleming.foundation/2015/11/paris-the-day-after/

Staying in Your Hometown

A wonderful (porchy) piece over at The Imaginative Conservative: http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/11/why-you-should-stay-in-your-hometown.html

FPR Update

Dear Readers, When FPR launched in 2009, we weren't sure what to expect. We knew our culture, economy, and politics were broken, and believed that...

From St. Augustine’s Porch

Bk IV, ch. 3: But let us suppose a case of two men; for each individual man, like one letter in a language, is as...

Tonight in Grand Rapids

I'll be speaking tonight at St. Isidore's in Grand Rapids as part of their "Fortnight for Freedom" series. My topic is "Two Cities: Can...

On the 800th Birthday of Magna Carta

At least we can still do this: http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/iowa-supreme-court-affirms-drunk-front-porch-31721986

The Philanthropic Revolution

Founding editor Jeremy Beer has just had his very important The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity published by UPenn Press. Walter...

On Commencement Addresses

Holland, MI It is graduation season. On campuses across the country graduates will be subject to the last compulsory and least remarkable rite of passage:...

2015 APL Conference

The annual conference of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters will once again be held in Baltimore this year at the BWI Doubletree. The...