The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) is pleased to announce that David Frisk will be returning to the AHI as a Resident Fellow for the 2013-14 academic year.  Dr. Frisk received his Ph.D. in political science from Claremont Graduate University in 2009 with specialties in American politics and political philosophy. He is also a graduate of Reed College with a degree in history.  His publications include If Not Us, Who? William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement (ISI Books, 2012), a comprehensive biography of a significant conservative leader that was favorably reviewed in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and several other major outlets.

Dr. Frisk taught American government at Concordia University in California and worked at the Claremont Institute. An alumnus of the National Journalism Center and a former award-winning newspaper reporter, he has published numerous opinion articles in the Jefferson Policy Journal of the Thomas Jefferson Institute in Virginia as well as essays for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal California and for the Claremont Review of Books. He is one of several contributors to the 2013 edition of The Political Science Reviewer, which provides a range of scholarly commentaries on Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right, a major interpretation of the conservative movement by Paul Gottfried.

During the spring semester of 2013, Frisk was awarded the AHI’s Theodore J. Eismeier Fellowship. At the AHI, he mentored students involved in the Publius Society, participated in a group independent study that required a select group of students to read cover-to-cover Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, and served  as a conferee in the AHI’s Sixth Annual Carl B. Menges Colloquium, which was devoted to the work of the notable Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. 

At the AHI, Dr. Frisk will continue work on a book that explores the shared principles of traditionalist and libertarian conservatism. He is organizing and will contribute to a book of scholarly essays tentatively titled The Goldwater Campaign 50 Years Later: New Perspectives. He is also preparing an essay on the Nixon presidency for a volume on American statesmanship to be co-edited by AHI Senior Fellow Joseph Fornieri of the Rochester Institute of Technology and Kenneth Deutsch of the State University of New York at Geneseo.

“The AHI is delighted that David Frisk accepted our offer to return as a Resident Fellow,” said AHI Charter Fellow Robert Paquette.  “He added immeasurably to the AHI’s intellectual life while he was here.  He enjoyed mentoring students in history, political science, and writing.  They enjoyed him.  We have plans to use him on an expanded basis, including a continuing education seminar that will focus on Charles Murray’s riveting critique of modern America in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.   To be frank, we hope to make Dr. Frisk a permanent presence at the AHI.”