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Books

Thomism and Aristotelianism

– Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. New York: Praeger Press, 1979 reprint.
Summary from Publisher: Dubbed a “minor classic” by Alasdair MacIntyre, Jaffa’s Thomism and Aristotelianism, that grew out of his doctoral dissertation, analyzes Thomas’… More

Statesmanship: Essays in Honor of Sir Winston S. Churchill

– Editor, Studies in Statesmanship of the Winston S. Churchill Association, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1982.
Table of Contents: Introduction: On the Necessity of a Scholarship of the Politics of Freedom / Harry V. Jaffa 1. In Search of Churchill’s Character / Martin Gilbert 2. Can There Be… More

American Conservatism and the American Founding

– Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.
Summary from the Publisher: This book is the fourth in a series (including Equality and Liberty, The Conditions of Freedom, and How to Think About the American Revolution) of reprinted… More

Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution

– Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994.
Summary from the Publisher: Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question is a unique contribution to the debate, begun by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the… More

Shakespeare’s Politics

– Ed. by Harry V. Jaffa and Alan Bloom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Summary from the Publisher: Taking the classical view that the political shapes man’s consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist.… More

Storm Over the Constitution

– Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Summary from the Publisher: Written by one of America’s foremost political and legal theorists, Storm Over the Constitution examines the arguments of some of the leading proponents of… More

A New Birth of Freedom

– Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More

Essays

Review: Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace

– Social Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1952), pp. 117-121.
Review of Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace. Vol. I: Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy by Alan Gewirth.

Slavery — A Battle Revisited

– New Leader 41:30 (August 18-25, 1958). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
Review of Created Equal: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 by Paul Angle.

The Case Against Political Theory

– The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1960), pp. 259-275. Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).

Review: Patriotism and Morality

– Chicago Review, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Summer/Autumn, 1962), pp. 136-142. Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).
Review of Congressman Abraham Lincoln by Donald W. Riddle.

Aristotle

– In Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).

A Celebration of Tradition

– National Review, October 22, 1963, pp. 360-361.
Review of Rationalism in Politics, and Other Essays by Michael J. Oakeshott.

Reconstruction, Old and New

– National Review, April 20, 1965.
Review of The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 by Kenneth M. Stampp

The Limits of Dissent

– National Review, September 10, 1968, p. 911.
Review of Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience, by Abe Fortas.

Tom Sawyer: Hero of Middle America

– Interpretation, Spring 1972. Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
Excerpt: Tom Sawyer, master of the noble lie, is the master figure of American literature, the character in whom, more than in any other, Americans fancy themselves to be reflected and… More

Contra Herndon

– National Review, March 30, 1973, p. 376.
Review of Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish by David Elton Trueblood.

Portrait of a Patriot

– National Review, May 25, 1973. Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
Review of Stephen A. Douglas by Robert W. Johannsen.

The Truth about War

– National Review, August 3, 1973.
Review of Young Winston’s Wars: The Original Despatches of Winston S. Churchill, War Correspondent 1897-1900.

Debate: “Time on the Cross”

– National Review, March 28, 1975.
Review of Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman.

Equality as a Conservative Principle

– Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 8:471 (1975). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).
Excerpt: That Conservatism should search for its meaning implies of course that Conservatism does not have the meaning for which it is searching. This might appear paradoxical, since a… More

The (Okay) Imperial Presidency

– National Review, February 4, 1977.
The article reviews the book Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941: The Partnership That Saved the West by Joseph P. Lash.

Leo Strauss, 1952, ’53

– Modern Age, Summer 1982, pp. 266-269. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).

The Legacy of Leo Strauss

– Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984.
Excerpt: In 1974, the year following Leo Strauss’s death, the American Political Science Association estab­lished an annual award, in his honor, for the best dissertation in the… More

The Legacy of Leo Strauss Defended

– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.
Excerpt: Thomas Pangle declares that, in “The Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984), I am “guilty of gross misinterpretation” of his… More

The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange

– Letters, New York Review of Books, October 10, 1985.
Excerpt: Before I met Strauss this is what I had been taught, and had never been given any reason to question. I had spent five years at Yale in the 1930s, as undergraduate and graduate… More

Old Thinking For New Suckers

– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1988.
Excerpt: This offering by the General Secre­tary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon of some years back. Company big shots are sitting around the… More

The Anti-Anti-Smoking Brigade

– National Review, November 5, 1990, p. 85.
Description: Discusses perceptions on how to solve the problem of tobacco smoking addiction. Discussion of the impact of smoking on the health of Americans; Suggestion that moral influence… More

Inventing the Gettysburg Address

– Intercollegiate Review 28:1 (Fall 1992). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).
Excerpt: Thirty years ago, Garry Wills was a rising star of the Right, a celebrity in the constel­lation of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Na­tional Review. His essay on “The Conve­nient… More

Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).
Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More

Defending the Cause of Human Freedom

– The Claremont Institute, April 15, 1994.
Excerpt: The Spring 1994 Intercollegiate Review featured a section entitled “Not In Memoriam, But in Affirmation: M. E. Bradford.” I welcome this, or any tribute, to my departed… More

God and Man in Court: Graglia’s Quarrel with God

– National Review, August 14, 1995, pp. 30-32.
Abstract: The article presents the author’s response to the comments of law professor Lino A. Graglia on his critique of U.S. Judge Robert Bork and Chief Justice William Rehnquist… More

The Speech That Changed the World

– Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy Vol. 24 Issue 3 (Spring 1997).
Excerpt: Of all Lincoln’s speeches, whether greater or lesser, the only one that can be said truly to have changed the course of history, was delivered to the Republican State… More

Strauss at 100

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).
Excerpt: It is almost routine in the scholarship of greatness, whether philosophic or political, to discover fathomless complexity in its subjects. Certainly this has been true about… More

Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding

– Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2001.
Excerpt: In his review of A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, in the inaugural issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes,… More

The Peace Process Is Dead. Let’s Bury It.

– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: The Oslo “Peace Process” is dead. It is time for a public burial, before the corpse infects the landscape even more than it has already. As the fighting between… More

The False Prophets of American Conservatism

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, June 11, 2014. In Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert P. Hunt, eds.,  A Moral Enterprise: Politics, Reason, and the Human Good (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2002.)
Excerpt: While the crisis of today does not have the immediacy of the crisis over slavery, its underlying character is the same. It is commonplace today to compare the issue of abortion to… More

L’Envoi to Woody Hayes

– The Claremont Institute, January 3, 2003.
Excerpt: History will record that Woody Hayes (who died March 12, 1987) and I began our careers at Ohio State the same year, 1951. No one in the press has taken note of this fact, and… More

American Conservatism and the Present Crisis

– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2003.
Excerpt: Roger Scruton, writing in the Wall Street Journal last December, declared that “September 11 was a wake up call through which liberals have managed to go on dreaming.… More

Wages of Sin

– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2004.
Excerpt: Among the young scholars in the 1950s who challenged the prevailing historical canon on slavery, no less than Fogel, was one he never mentions. Before the publication of Crisis of… More

Original Intent and the American Soul

– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2005/06.
Excerpt: While quibbling over Harriet Miers’s ill-fated nomination to the Supreme Court, conservatives overlooked the more serious flaw in President Bush’s claim that he would… More

The Disputed Question: Judicial Activism, Left and Right

– Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006/07.
Excerpt: Professor Michael Uhlmann has given us a devastating indictment of mainstream Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last century, with particular reference to the last half century.… More

Who Owns the Copyright to the Universe?

– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2006.
Excerpt: In a Wall Street Journal essay, James Q. Wilson praised a Pennsylvania federal judge’s decision to strike down efforts of a local school board to have “intelligent… More

Macbeth and the Moral Universe

– Adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College in 1974. Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2007/08.
Excerpt: Macbeth is a moral play par excellence. In this, it stands in stark contrast to two more recent well-known tales of murder, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and… More

The American Founding as the Best Regime

– The Claremont Institute, July 4, 2007.
Excerpt: The Preamble of the Constitution crowns its enumeration of the ends of the Constitution by declaring its purpose to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our… More

Lincoln in Peoria

– Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: A friendly critic has recently characterized my life’s work as dedicated to the moral vision of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria. Of course, as a faithful student of Leo… More

Thoreau and Lincoln

– From A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau, ed. Jack Turner (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2010). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).

Aristotle and the Higher Good

– New York Times, July 1, 2011.
Excerpt: Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so… More

The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats

– The Claremont Institute, June 9, 2014.
Excerpt: In the fall of 1964, I was on the speech-writing staff of the Goldwater campaign. In September and October I went on a number of forays to college campuses, where I debated… More

Can There Be Another Winston Churchill?

– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.
Excerpt: On the night of the tenth of May, 1940, on the eve of the ill-fated Battle of France, Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain. As he went to bed, he tells us, at about 3… More

The End of History Means the End of Freedom

– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.
Excerpt: Mr. Fukuyama is a disciple of the late Alexander Kojeve, who re-interpreted Hegel’s version of the “end of history” to justify his support of the regime of Josef… More

Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace

– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.
Excerpt: Our lives were twined and intertwined in many ways. Joe entered the doctoral program in economics at Columbia soon after receiving his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1939.… More

The Emancipation Proclamation

– In Robert A. Godwin, ed., 100 Years of Emancipation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).
Excerpt: Both in the pre-inaugural period, and in the opening stages of the conflict, the danger of disunion, now the paramount danger, did not come from the forces of slavery alone. It… More

Commentary

Source of American Caesarism: Review of Harry V. Jaffa

– Willmoore Kendall, National Review, November 7, 1959.
Excerpt: The idea of natural right is not so easily reducible to the equality clause, and there are better ways of demonstrating the possibility of self-government than imposing one’s… More

English Bards and APSR Reviewers

– Sigurd Burckhardt, The American Political Science Review Vol. 54, No. 1 (March 1960).
Excerpt: Recently the Review has extended its hospitality to studies which are not, technically, within the discipline it serves. A new school of Shakespeare criticism may be in the making;… More

Lincoln and Douglas

– Allen Nevins, New Leader 43:20 (May 1960).
Review of Crisis of the House Divided.

Political Philosophy and Poetry

– Allan Bloom, The American Political Science Review Vol. 54, No. 2 (June 1960).
Excerpt: Sigurd Burckhardt has rendered a service in providing the occasion for a thematic presentation of the principles underlying the interpretations of Shakespearean drama by Jaffa and… More

A Restatement

– Allan Bloom, The American Political Science Review Vol. 54, No. 2 (June 1960).

Strange Bedfellows

– George Kateb, Commentary, August 1965.
Excerpt: Eyebrows were raised last summer when the New York Times reported that Harry Jaffa was writing campaign speeches for Barry Gold-water. How could it be that this student of… More

The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa

– M. E. Bradford, Modern Age (Winter 1976).
Excerpt: This essay is a direct response to Harry Jaffa’s “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, VI11 (June, 1975), pp. 471-505, which is itself a… More

Fellows’ Choice

– Hadley Arkes, The Wilson Quarterly 1:3 (Spring 1977), pp. 127-128.
Review of Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz

– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.
Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More

The Platonism of Leo Strauss: A Reply to Harry Jaffa

– Thomas L. Pangle, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.
Excerpt: The editor has invited me to respond to Harry Jaffa’s attack in his “Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books,vol. III, no. 3, Fall 1984). I do so after… More

Seven Questions for Professor Jaffa

– George Anastaplo, Seattle University Law Review 10:3 (1987). Reprinted in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).
Abstract: This Article poses questions inspired by the four essays collected in Professor Harry V. Jaffa’s article “What Were the ‘Original Intentions’ of the Framers of the… More

Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion

– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).
Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More

The Virtue of Practical Wisdom

– Justice Clarence Thomas, Claremont Institute, February 9, 1999.
Excerpt: We gather here tonight in memory of a great man, a great president whose noble words and selfless deeds enabled this great nation to fulfill its promises of equality and liberty… More

Crisis of the House Divided

– Michael M. Uhlmann, First Things, March 2000.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa has few peers as a student of the American Founding and none as the expositor of the Declaration of Independence and the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. He first… More

A New Birth of Freedom

– Charles R. Kesler, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2000.
Excerpt: More than 40 years ago, Harry V. Jaffa published Crisis of the House Divided, his now-classic interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. In the preface to that book, Jaffa… More

Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe

– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More

Jaffa’s Lincolnian Defense of the Founding

– Thomas G. West, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: In A New Birth of Freedom, Harry Jaffa presents a powerful defense of the political theory of the American founding. He does it in grand style. Formally, his topic is Lincoln and… More

Jaffa versus Mansfield by Thomas G. West

– Thomas G. West, Perspectives on Political Science 31:4 (Fall 2002).
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa and Harvey Mansfield are two of the ablest among those whose study of America has been shaped and helped by what they learned from Strauss. Both men are patriots. Both… More

Harry V. Jaffa

– Edward J. Erler, in Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson, eds., American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006).
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa was a student of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. The principal theme of Strauss’ work was “the crisis of the West,” a crisis precipitated by… More

Harry Jaffa: Aristotelianizing America

– In Catherine and Michael Zuckert, The Truth About Leo Strauss (The University of Chicago Press, 2006)
Selection from “The Emergence of the Straussian Study of America,” Chapter Six in The Truth About Leo Strauss (The University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety

– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.
Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More

The Goldwater Campaign

– Eric Benson, New York Magazine, October 14, 2012.
Excerpt: You weren’t one of Barry Goldwater’s speechwriters. How did you come to write his most famous speech? For most of the campaign, I was on the payroll for the American Enterprise… More

The House of Jaffa by John J. Miller

– John J. Miller, National Review, July 1, 2013.
Excerpt: Jaffa is one of the most famously cantankerous intellectuals in America — and when he takes a special interest in a person, it doesn’t always remain as amiable as it did with… More

Straussian Civil Wars

– Ken Masugi, Library of Law and Liberty, August 25, 2013.
Excerpt: Jaffa’s achievement was to revolutionize the serious study of American politics and political history and as well to goad American conservatism into an examination of founding… More

Remembering Harry Jaffa

– W. B. Allen, Hillsdale College, 2015.
Excerpt: Remember Harry Jaffa as he remembered himself: Leo Strauss’s best student.  In nothing did Jaffa  so powerfully affect the imaginations of near colleagues as in that claim of… More

Harry Jaffa, R.I.P.

– Yuval Levin, National Review Online, January 11, 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa was perhaps best known for his contributions to our understanding of Abraham Lincoln’s political thought. Even amid the staggering profusion of books about Lincoln —… More

In Memoriam: Harry V. Jaffa, 1918-2015

– Claremont McKenna College, January 12, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, a preeminent professor of political philosophy whose views contributed to CMC’s early identity as a bastion of conservatism on the West Coast, passed away last… More

Harry Jaffa, R.I.P.

– Richard Brookhiser, National Review Online, January 12, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry’s great and lasting service was to rescue Abraham Lincoln from the whittlers and the minimizers. Early/mid-20th century biographers like Beveridge and Randall added to our… More

Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker by Ken Masugi

– Ken Masugi, Library of Law & Liberty, January 15, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most… More

Five Rounds With Harry Jaffa

– Charles Kesler, The Federalist, January 16, 2015.
Excerpt: In his youth in New York City, Harry V. Jaffa was a Golden Gloves boxer. His pugnacious ways didn’t stop there. When he died last Saturday, aged 96, his decades in the… More

Remembering Harry Jaffa, A Thinking Man’s Conservative

– David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, January 16, 2015.
Excerpt: With a few words, Harry Jaffa altered the course of American conservatism: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Jaffa, a Claremont professor and thinker, died Jan.… More

Remembering Harry V. Jaffa

– William B. Allen, Hadley Arkes, Allen C. Guelzo, Lewis E. Lehrman, Bradley C. S. Watson, et al, Claremont Institute, Winter 2015.
Excerpt: Editor’s note: To honor the Claremont Institute’s Distinguished Fellow Harry V. Jaffa, we published in our Winter 2014/15 issue the eulogies offered at his memorial service by… More

Jaffa as Neo-Puritan

– Peter Lawler, Library of Law & Liberty, January 21, 2015.
Excerpt: To return to Jaffa: Let me begin by admitting that, in the disputes he got into with all of the others, I always had a soft spot for Harry, whether or not he was actually right on… More

Arguing America

– Steve F. Hayward, The Weekly Standard, January 26, 2015.
Excerpt: Nothing could prepare a student for the shock of hearing Harry Jaffa in the classroom for the first time. From virtually his first word, you could tell that this was not going to… More

Saving President Lincoln

– Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard, January 26, 2015.
Excerpt: Ten years later Jaffa published Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. It was not only his best book (he wrote several very,… More

How Jaffa’s Critics Remember Him

– H. Lee Cheek, Jr. and Sean Busick, Library of Law & Liberty, January 26, 2015.
Excerpt: American political science has lost a significant contributor with the demise of Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015).  We mourn the death of Professor Jaffa, and acknowledge that there… More

Scholars of American Politics

– Harvey Mansfield, The Weekly Standard, February 9, 2015.
Excerpt: Among followers of Strauss, one issue is the importance of politics in the relationship of politics and philosophy. Politics thinks it is the most important human activity… More

Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding

– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More

Remembering Harry V. Jaffa

– Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2015.
Excerpt: Editor’s note: To honor the Claremont Institute’s Distinguished Fellow Harry V. Jaffa, we published in our Winter 2014/15 issue the eulogies offered at his memorial service by… More

Harry V. Jaffa, 1918-2015

– Michael M. Uhlmann, Edward J. Erler, Thomas G. West, and Larry P. Arnn, Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2015.
Excerpt: Harry Victor Jaffa died at the age of 96 on January 10, 2015. The Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy was founded by a few of his students… More

Harry V. Jaffa’s Call for Liberation

– Ken Masugi, First Things, March 2, 2015.
Excerpt: Perhaps the most heatedly denounced work of a distinguished scholar is Harry Jaffa’s occasional writing on homosexuality. The passions surrounding the issue distort understanding… More

Harry V. Jaffa: An Appreciation by Michael Anton

– Michael Anton, Claremont Review of Books, March 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa knew everything, or at least everything important. Much of what will be written about him in the coming days will focus on Lincoln, American politics, and modern… More

Harry V. Jaffa, 1918-2015

– Bradley C. S. Watson, Modern Age, June 2015.
Excerpt: When Harry V. Jaffa died on January 10 of this year, he left a legacy that the conservative intellectual movement will be sifting for generations. More than anything else, he… More

Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy

– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Harry Jaffa: Citizen Straussian

– Michael Zuckert, Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: My main thesis is that Harry’s career as a thinker, teacher, and political man was an expression of his efforts to hold together these two loves—Strauss and America. As anyone… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More

Making Sense of the American Founding

– "Making Sense of the American Founding" (Interview with Thomas G. West by Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn), American Greatness, October 8, 2017
Hillsdale College professor Thomas West discusses Harry Jaffa and Jaffa’s interpretation of the American founding in this wide ranging interview.    

Multimedia

Harry V. Jaffa on Equality

– Audio lecture, Hillsdale College, 1972.
Summary: Harry V. Jaffa delivered this speech in 1972 at Hillsdale College’s CCA seminar titled “Recycling the City: Alternatives to Decay.”

Harry V. Jaffa on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

– Audio lecture, Hillsdale College, April 1974.
Summary: Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) delivered this speech in April 1974 at Hillsdale College’s CCA seminar on “Crime and Punishment: The American Judicial System.”

Harry V. Jaffa on Shakespeare’s Macbeth

– Audio lecture, Hillsdale College, April 1974.
Summary: Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) delivered this speech in April 1974 at Hillsdale College’s CCA seminar on “Crime and Punishment: The American Judicial System.”

Our Embattled Constitution

– Video, Hillsdale College, September 15, 2003.
Harry V. Jaffa discusses Lincoln and his Lincoln scholarship in this 2003 speech at Hillsdale College.

Lincoln with Harry Jaffa on Uncommon Knowledge

– Uncommon Knowledge, Hoover Institution, July 22, 2009.
Summary: In a year that marks the two hundredth year since the birth of Lincoln, and the fiftieth year since the publication of his own Crisis of the House Divided, Harry Jaffa discusses… More

Ed Erler on Harry Jaffa

– The American Mind, Claremont Institute, January 9, 2014.
Summary: CSUSB Professor Edward J. Erler recalls his first meeting and studies with Claremont Mens’ College Professor Harry V. Jaffa.

Harry Jaffa Memorial Remarks

– Video, Claremont Institute, February 24, 2015.
Summary: Remarks delivered at Dr. Harry V. Jaffa’s funeral service on January 15, 2015 at Todd Memorial Chapel in Claremont, CA. The speakers, all students of Dr. Jaffa, are Edward J.… More

The Declaration in a House Divided

– Video, Jack Miller Center, April 21, 2015.
Summary: Interviews with Diana Schaub, James W. Ceaser, and others on the Declaration of Independence.