Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes

From Indiana University:

Aurelian Craiutu (Ph.D. Princeton, 1999) is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Adjunct Professor in the American Studies Program. He is also affiliated with the Russian and East European Institute, the Institute for European Studies, the Ostrom Workshop, and the Lilly School of Philanthropic Studies. Prior to coming to Indiana, he taught at Duke University and the University of Northern Iowa. In 2010, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Paris-II, Panthéon-Assas and in 2005 and 2006, he was Visiting Professor at the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania.

Craiutu’s research interests include French political and social thought (Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Constant, Madame de Staël, Guizot, Aron), political ideologies (liberalism, conservatism) as well as theories of transition to democracy and democratic consolidation (mostly Central and Eastern Europe). He is the author and editor of several books on modern political thought. His first monograph, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2003), won a 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award. It was also translated into French in a revised and enlarged edition as Le centre introuvable: la pensée politique des doctrinaires sous la Restauration (Plon, 2006). His two most recent books are A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830 (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Dr. Craiutu also published two books in political theory in Romanian, In Praise of Liberty: Essays in Political Philosophy, (1998), and In Praise of Moderation (2006), both with Polirom Publishing House, one of the country’s leading presses.

He has also edited six books: François Guizot, History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe (Liberty Fund, 2002); Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (Liberty Fund, 2008); America through European Eyes (co-edited with Jeffrey C. Isaac, Penn State University Press, 2009); Conversations with Tocqueville (co-edited with Sheldon Gellar, Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings (with Jeremy Jennings, Cambridge University Press, 2009), as well as Dialog şi libertate: Eseuri în onoarea lui Mihai Şora [Dialogue and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Mihai Şora], edited by Aurelian Craiutu & Sorin Antohi (Bucharest: Nemira Publishing House, 1997) [in Romanian].

Dr. Craiutu’s articles and reviews have been published in many academic journals including American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, The Review of Politics, History of Political Thought, Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, and History of European Ideas. He served as Associate Editor of the European Journal of Political Theory (2004-14).

Professor Craiutu has received awards, fellowships, and grants from several institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the James Madison Program (Princeton University), the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Earhart Foundation. In 2000, he won the American Political Science Association’s Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political theory. In 2004, he received a Student Choice Award and an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at Indiana University.

He is currently working on a book manuscript on moderation and the rise of democracy in France, 1830-1880 and is preparing for Liberty Fund a new translation and annotated edition of Jacques Necker’s On the Executive Power in Large States (1792).