Many of those who attended the AHI’s inaugural colloquium on the meaning of freedom, commented on the wit, grace, and intelligence of Professor H. Lee Cheek, who served as moderator of the six sessions during the two-day event.   The AHI is pleased to announce that Professor Cheek has agreed to help us water the seed of educational reform by joining the AHI as a senior fellow.

Professor Cheek is chairman of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division and Professor of Political Science at Brewton-Parker College in Mt. Vernon, Georgia.  He received a Ph. D. in political science from The Catholic University of America.  Professor Cheek is also a Methodist minister who holds a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University.  He has published dozens of books and articles on political and religious thought.  As the author of  Calhoun and Popular Rule (University of Missouri Press, 2001) and editor of a new edition of Calhoun’s A Disquisition on Government (St. Augustine, 2007),  Professor Cheek ranks as a leading authority on one of this country’s most brilliant and original political thinkers. He has also won multiple teaching awards at several universities.

In commenting on the addition of Professor Cheek to the AHI, Robert Paquette noted how Professor Cheek will help expand the influence of the AHI both regionally and organizationally.  “Lee Cheek is well-connected in the South, to private religious schools, and to such kindred-spirit organizations as Liberty Fund.  He will prove to be an enormous asset in the AHI’s development of cooperative programming with groups and individuals who share our concerns about the state of higher learning and about  the fate of Western culture.”  Douglas Ambrose added, “Lee Cheek embodies much of what is best in the Western intellectual tradition: inquisitiveness, rigor, humility, honesty, and a deep  appreciation of the complexities of the human condition.  He cuts  through the cant and pretentiousness that informs so much of today’s  scholarship in an effort to understand American political thought and  the various traditions that have contributed to it. His work reminds  us of how much we can learn from a sincere engagement with thinkers, such as Calhoun, that too many of us dismiss or have forgotten.  He  proved a marvelous moderator of the AHI’s inaugural colloquium, and I, for one, am eager to work with him on future AHI projects.”