Emily Ghods posts at Armavirumque concerning a John Tomasi lecture hosted by the Manhattan Institute’s Center for the American University. Tomasi is the director of Brown’s admirable Political Theory Project. Working at the Manhattan Institute, I’ve heard multiple accolades about yesterday’s speech (which I somehow didn’t attend) from attendees: here’s a fine example.

Professor Tomasi explains his success in terms of eating soup: often, on a campus as fervently liberal as Brown, Professor Tomasi is forced to listen to and endure the most absurd drivel while he quietly and passively looks down at his bowl and “eats his soup.” He is not a bomb thrower. After his talk, he explained to me the driving force behind his Zen-like approach: “We just want to win—-we just want to win.” He understands that to affect change from within, especially at Brown, patience and harmony are the only paths to victory. Contention and controversy would simply detach him and his program from the faculty and administration. For this reason, the post-docs and speakers that he brings to Brown express opinions that run the gamut of intellectual thought. His program hosts ‘debates’ rather than monolectures on conservative principles. His courses on political and economic thought teach Marx but also teach Hayek. Some Hayek is better than no Hayek at all, and therein lies the success of Tomasi’s PTP.