Alan Levine Director, Political Theory Institute and Associate Professor SPA | Government

Degrees: Ph,D, Harvard University
M.A., Harvard University
B.A., University of Chicago
Bio: Levine is the author of Sensual Philosophy: Toleration, Skepticism, and Montaigne’s Politics of the Self (2001), described by the APSR as “the best book-length study of Montaigne’s political ideas yet published in English.” Levine is also editor or co-editor of three books: Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration (1999); A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson (with Daniel Malachuk, 2011); and The Political Thought of the Civil War (with Thomas Merrill and James Stoner, 2018). He has also published articles and book chapters on Montaigne, Machiavelli, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Chinua Achebe, Judith Shklar, European views of America, the Enlightenment idea of commerce, the history of "truth," and the origins of toleration.

Levine has been awarded prestigious residential fellowships at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; at the Institute of United States Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London; and at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University; as well as two nationally competitive research awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received several grants to research in France and England, a Foundation for the Defense of Democracy award to study counter terrorism in Israel, and five teaching awards, four at American University and, most recently, the Jack Miller Center’s 2023 Excellence in Civic Education Award.

Levine is the Founding Director of the Political Theory Institute. He reads French and has working knowledge of Classical Greek.

See Also: Political Theory Institute; SPA Department of Government
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Faculty Profile: Alan Levine

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Alan Levine Director, Political Theory Institute and Associate Professor SPA | Government

Teaching

Spring 2025

Fall 2025