Academia Tocqueville
In 2017, Laurent Frémont was appointed to serve the French Embassy in the United States. While living in D.C., he was struck by the interest many Americans had in France, and in French political thought. But many of his American friends lamented that they lacked formal opportunities to study French traditions.
This gave him an idea. What if we could bring Anglophone students to France to study the best of French political thought? For a long time, this idea sadly remained only a dream. In 2023, this dream finally became a reality, thanks to the tireless dedication of Luke Foster and Nathan Pinkoski.
Committed to the highest academic standards, Academia Tocqueville provides a comprehensive introduction to French political thought. Its curriculum is dedicated to the thinkers neglected by American and British universities. It is an independent program that teaches students what they can learn culturally, politically, and spiritually from France’s intellectual tradition. Their task is to understand the answers French thinkers have offered to the most difficult questions of the modern era.
But the program goes beyond the classroom. Students are introduced to the French political tradition in the fullest sense, connecting culture, history, and religion with politics. They learn to distinguish a Bordeaux from a Burgundy and discover beautiful art and music. They visit the hidden sites of Paris that are closed to tourists. Finally, they forge new transatlantic alliances and friendships that help Western nations learn from each other.
Permanent Faculty
Laurent Frémont
Laurent Frémont is a French political scientist and consultant. He teaches history of political thought at the Institut d’Etudes Catholiques de Paris, as well as constitutional law at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He was an advisor to François Fillon (2017 presidential candidate) and worked as an attaché at the French embassy in the United States. He holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Public Affairs from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), an MA in Political Theory from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), as well as an LLM in Public Law from La Sorbonne (Université Paris 1). He writes on ethics and institutions.
Nathan Pinkoski
Nathan Pinkoski is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. His research and teaching covers 20th-century political thought, early modern political thought, and classical political thought. He has published in a variety of academic and popular journals, including First Things, Perspectives on Political Science, and The Review of Politics. He holds a BA (Hon) from the University of Alberta and an MPhil and DPhil in Politics: Political Theory, from the University of Oxford. He had held research fellowships and lectureships at Princeton University, the University of Toronto, and the Zephyr Institute (Stanford University). He recently translated Alasdair MacIntyre: une biographie intellectuelle (Alasdair MacIntyre: An Intellectual Biography), by Émile Perreau-Saussine (University of Notre Dame Press). He is a Contributing Editor for Compact: A Radical American Journal.
Luke Foster
Luke Foster is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of Notre Dame and a former Visiting Research Fellow at Sciences Po Paris. His research and teaching concerns American and French political thought on aristocracy, democracy, meritocracy, and education. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Excellence for the Democratic Age: Liberal Education and the Mixed Regime. His work has appeared in The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, American Political Thought, and the Political Science Reviewer. He holds a BA in English and History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago (Committee on Social Thought), and has received fellowships from the France Chicago Center, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Institute for Humane Studies.
