Dr. Peter Meilaender, Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of History and Political Science, has been named the 2020–2021 Visiting Professor for American Enterprise Institute’s Initiative on Faith & Public Life. The initiative is a project of AEI, one of the world’s leading policy think tanks, based in Washington, D.C. It is designed to provide Christian college students with formational, educational and professional opportunities that propel them to lives of faith and leadership in the public square. 

As Visiting Professor, a position that rotates every academic year, Dr. Meilaender will join the initiative in exploring issues of nationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism; shifting electoral alignments along national-populist lines in the United States (and across Western democracies); and appropriate Christian perspectives on—and responses to—these phenomena. 

Dr. Meilaender writes, “I am particularly interested in how Christianity offers a vision that is at once appreciative of particular loyalties, such as those to one’s own country and its culture, but also open to and interested in the kingdom of God in all its diversity and richness, including the flourishing of other countries and cultures.” 

Among other activities, Dr. Meilaender will lead a series of virtual seminars on these timely themes, teach a course during AEI’s 2021 Summer Honors Program and write an essay that proposes an appropriate Christian perspective on the growing rift in our polity along national-populist lines. 

Dr. Meilaender will do much of this work remotely and will have the opportunity to devote some of his sabbatical research time to these projects.