YouTube Channel: Primary Texts Certificate
The Live Ideas Lecture Series is sponsored by the Primary Texts Certificate and the Redbud Foundation. Speakers in the series focus on primary texts that can inspire us and help us better understand our world. Our series is open to the public. For more recordings of previous lectures and news about what’s coming next, please visit the program’s website. Here’s the latest lecture in the series:
Fall 2025: Dr. Marion Hourdequin, Assistant Dean of the Faculty and Professor in the Philosophy Department at Colorado College, “Environmental Ethics and Confucianism”, October 24, 2025.
Spring 2025: Dr. Murad Idris, Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, “The Politics and Global Afterlives of Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan”, April 11, 2025.
Dr. Idris is currently Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Michigan. He is the author of War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford, 2019), co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory and co-author of Political Theory: A Global and Comparative Introduction (forthcoming, 2025). Dr. Idris’s ongoing research includes projects on the racialization of Muslims, Sayyid Qutb’s neglected writings on empire, and Ibn Tufayi’s reception history. Abstract: “Over the last two centuries, why did European and Arab intellectuals read Islamic philosophy? This lecture explores how they interpreted Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a famous allegory by the 12th-century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufayl. The story follows a boy raised by a doe on an island and eventually attains knowledge of God. Dr. Idris will discuss competing ways of reading the allegory’s ethics and politics, the civilizational and colonial battles over its significance, and the stakes for the contemporary global humanities.”
Spring 2024: Prof. John Scott, University of California-Davis, on April 18, 2024, gives a Live Ideas Lecture at Kansas State University on the topic of his book, Rousseau’s God: Theology, Religion, and the Natural Goodness of Man (2023).
Fall 2023: David Lay Williams, Political Science Professor at DePaul University, “Through the Eye of a Needle: Economic Inequality in the New Testament,” October 20, 2023, Regnier Forum, Regnier Hall.
Fall 2022: Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, Assistant Professor of Strategy and Security at the United States Air Force Air University, “The Other Clausewitz: Marie von Clausewitz and the Making of On War.“
Fall 2021: Michelle Schwarze, Professor of Political Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison, “The Upside of Resentment: Adam Smith on Recognizing Injustice.”
Few people know Smith’s moral theory, and Dr. Schwarze not only informed us of this aspect of his theory but dispelled a few myths about Adam Smith’s ideas that are perpetuated in textbooks as well as in the popular media. Dr. Dennis C. Rasmussen’s lecture on Smith from a few years ago is also available on this channel and is a good accompaniment to Dr Swharze’s talk.
Spring 2021: Brandon Turner, Professor of Political Science at Clemson University, “Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees and the Twitterverse.”
Fall 2020: Patrick Deneen, Professor of Political Science at University of Notre Dame, “The Crisis of Liberalism and the Way Forward”
Patrick Deneen is Professor of Political Science and David A. Potenziani Memorial College Chair of Constitutional Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding Director of the Tocqueville Forum at Georgetown University and founding member of Front Porch Republic and founding editor of the eponymous journal. He is the author of The Odyssey of Political Theory, Democratic Faith, Conserving America? Thoughts on Present Discontents (2016), and most recently Why Liberalism Failed (Yale University Press, 2018). For more information on Dr. Deneen: www.frontporchrepublic.com , www.patrickjdeneen.com
Fall 2019: Daniel Kapust, Professor of Political Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Machiavelli and the Fate of the Imperial Republics.”
Fall 2018: Dennis Rasmussen, Professor of Political Science and Head of the Department of Political Science at Tufts University, “Adam Smith and the Problem with Inequality”
His talk, drawing from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, was on Smith’s views on the problems caused by excessive economic inequality.
Spring 2018: Fred Neuhouser, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, April 19, 2018 “Rousseau and Economic Inequality.”
Spring 2018: Khalil Habib, Associate Professor, Director of the Pell Honors Program at Salve Regina University, spoke on “Ibn Khaldun and the Golden Age of Islamic Philosophy.”
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