The John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy

Ralph Lerner is the Benjamin Franklin Professor in the College, and professor in the Committee on Social Thought, at the University of Chicago.

He attended public school in Chicago, received his degrees in political science at the University of Chicago, and had a year of post-graduate study of medieval Hebrew at the University of Cambridge. He has served in the U.S. Army. All of his teaching has been at the University of Chicago, apart from visiting appointments at Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard universities and a visiting lectureship at the Institut Raymond Aron. He has received fellowship awards from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Humanities Center. He has received a Quantrell Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Among his publications on modern themes are:

"Calhoun's New Science of Politics," in APSR, 57 (1963):918-32

"Commerce and Character: The Anglo-American as New-Model Man," in WMQ, 36 (1979):3-26 (award winner)

The Founders' Constitution (co-edited with Philip B. Kurland), 5 vols. (Chicago, 1987) (winner of 3 awards)

The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic (Ithaca, 1987) (award winner)

Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Politics of Enlightenment (Chapel Hill, 1994)

"Rattling the Iron Cage," Law and History Review, 15 (1997):145-58


"Love of Fame and the Constitution of Liberty," in Geschichte und Recht, ed. T. Angerer, B. Bader-Zaar, and M. Grandner (Wien, 1999), 63-76

Among his publications on medieval themes are:

"Moses Maimonides," in History of Political Philosophy, ed. L. Strauss and J. Cropsey (3d ed., Chicago, 1987), 228-47

Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook (co-edited with Muhsin Mahdi and Ernest L. Fortin) (Ithaca, 1963)

Averroes on Plato's Republic (trans. with intro. and notes) (Ithaca, 1974)

"Beating the Neoplatonic Bushes," in Journal of Religion, 67 (1987):510-17

"Maimonides' Governance of the Solitary," in Perspectives on Maimonides, ed. J. L. Kraemer (Oxford, 1991), 33-46

Maimonides' Empire of Light: Popular Enlightenment in an Age of Belief (Chicago, 2000)

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