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Peter Meilaender

High school life held its challenges for Peter Meilaender. Self-described as a “fairly conservative kid” growing up in a liberal college town in Ohio during the Reagan era, he recalls “we had a lot of good arguments.” “Always being forced to defend my views really sparked my interest in politics.” Meilaender was up to the challenge; he went on to graduate summa cum laude from Kenyon College and earn masters and doctoral degrees in political science at Notre Dame.

He gained teaching experience through visiting professorships at Notre Dame and Duke before joining the Houghton faculty in 2000. Meilaender appreciates his Houghton students, in terms of their “intellectual quality, but also their likeability in other respects …they are bright and hard-working, conscientious, polite, thoughtful—the kind of men and women you hope your own children will turn out to be.” This is especially positive, he notes, at a teaching college like Houghton, where faculty and students spend a lot of time together.

Meilaender notes that content-wise, teaching political science at a Christian college isn’t all that different from the secular college experience: “Most of our intellectual inquiry we conduct in common with our colleagues at secular institutions.” He appreciates, though, the opportunities Houghton affords to “be up front about the fact that I see my subject through a Christian lens and to draw my students’ attention to the ways in which that matters.” He also likes the “wide agreement” among students and faculty about “basic theological, philosophical and ethical premises” that shape the nature of their academic activity.