Professor of Government and Gary M. Pendy Sr. Professor of Social Sciences Jean Yarbrough headed to France recently to address a prestigious international conference.
Yarbrough, whose expertise includes political philosophy and American political thought, was featured on a panel at the Tocqueville Conversations, held at the Château de Tocqueville in Normandy on June 30 and July 1.
The venue is the former home of the nineteenth-century French political thinker and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville and the place where he wrote his magnum opus, Democracy in America, completed in 1840.
According to the Tocqueville Foundation, which organizes the annual event, the Tocqueville Conversations focus “on the challenges that our liberal democracies are increasingly facing.” The conference brings together “personalities from very different geographical, intellectual, and political backgrounds (heads of state, leading political figures and opponents, economic decision-makers, intellectuals, artists, whether French, European, American or others.)” The focus for this year’s conversations was the major upheavals that Europe is facing today.
The panel that Yarbrough participated in was called “Tocqueville and Us,” and it also featured Professor Joshua Mitchell from Georgetown University, as well as a French colleague.
