Papers delivered at Academic Conferences

• “Reason and the Human Good” was presented to the Social Science Seminar at the Institute for Advanced Study in April 1983. A revised version of it can be found in "Politics and Reason: An Overview" which is a précis of the project that began with my doctoral dissertation and now comprises three book manuscripts described below.

• "The Moral Attraction of Relativism: A Critique." was presented at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Political Science Association in March 1990.

• "Making Historicism Safe for the Word or The Best Offense is a Good Defense: A Critique of Rorty's Philosophy and Politics." was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April 1990.

• "Legalism, Realism and U.S. Supreme Court Decision-Making" (with Saul Brenner) was presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest Political Science Association in March 1994

• "Public Goods, Political Liberalism and the Priority of the Right over the Good" was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April 1994.

• "Does Stare Decisis Influence the Justices's Voting on the Supreme Court?" was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September 1995 (with Saul Brenner).

• "Liberal Democracy and Civic Culture: Beyond Victorianism and Romanticism" was presented at the USA / Russia Roundtable on Democratization at UNC Charlotte in March 1996.

• “Pragmatism, Freedom and Critique: Beyond The Epistemological Strategy of Modernity” was presented at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Political Science Association in March 1996.

• "Desert, Entitlement and Justice" was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September 1996.

• "How Much of Communitarianism is Left (and Right)?" was presented at a conference on Communitarianism and Civil Society at Berry College on October 17, 1996.

• "Is Democracy Stable? Compared to What?"  was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in August 1997 (with Robert J. Mundt).

• “What Would a Liberal Communitarian Polity Actually Look Like?” was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September 1998.

• “Three Ends and a Beginning: Theory, Ideology, History and Politics” was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April 1999.

• “Civilization and Its Contents: Platonic Reflections on Eros and the Culture Wars” was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September 1999. A revised version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April 2000.

•  “Principles and Prudence: Reconciling Liberalism and Communitarianism" was presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association in April 2000. A revised version was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September 2000.

• Screens, Doors, and Stairs: On John Ford’s The Last Hurrah, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September 2000.

• "Christianity in the Western Tradition," was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Core Texts and Courses in April 2000.

• “Liberal Virtue / Communitarian Virtue” was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April 2002 and at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September 2002.

• “Growing Up in a Catskills Hotel,” was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in March 2003.

• “Political Liberalism and the Search for Moral Consensus” was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April 2003

• “Justice and Responsibility for Self” was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September, 2003. I gave an earlier version of this paper at the Southwest Political Science Association in March 1997.

• “Democracy and Diversity: A theoretical argument based upon the historical experience of the West Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia” was written for an International Conference on Deliberative Democracy held in Hangzhou, China in December 2004. It was published in Chinese translation in 2005 in a book edited by Bao-Gang He. An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2003.

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