THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Dr. Luke Foster is Assistant Professor of Government at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. From 2022-24 he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame, and from 2020-22 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at Sciences Po Paris. His research and teaching concerns American and French political thought on aristocracy, democracy, and the role of the university in elite formation. He is co-founder of Academia Tocqueville, an annual Paris-based intensive seminar on French political thought.
His book Beyond Meritocracy: The Pursuit of Excellence in America, will appear in 2027 with the University of Notre Dame Press. His work has been published in Modern Intellectual History, The Tocqueville Review, American Political Thought, the Political Science Reviewer, and Laws. He holds a BA in English and History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago with the Committee on Social Thought.
Education: B.A. in English and History, Columbia University, 2015
Interests: History of political thought, political philosophy, educational theory, modern receptions of the ancients, American political thought, French and German Enlightenments.
Dissertation title: "Separated Powers in the Democratic Soul: The Liberal Arts and the Pursuit of Excellence in America."
Dissertation committee: Nathan Tarcov (chair), Joel Isaac, and Joshua Mitchell (Georgetown University).
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