Peter Berkowitz

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A political scientist and legal scholar, he writes on constitutionalism, liberal education, and U.S. foreign policy; he previously led the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff from 2019 to 2021 and is the author of Reclaiming Liberal Education.

Liberal Education Must Prepare Citizens for Freedom, Not Political Enlistment

Peter Berkowitz, a Hoover Institution senior fellow, argues in Reclaiming Liberal Education that American universities have too often replaced education for citizenship with progressive political instruction. He calls for a common core, classrooms open to serious disagreement, and institutional reforms led by trustees, donors, parents, and alternative programs—not federal control of academic life. The test, he says, is whether colleges can show that students encounter competing ideas and do their own intellectual work.

Hoover InstitutionAug 28, 202616 min read