Harry V. Jaffa

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Harry V. Jaffa is a "distinguished fellow of The Claremont Institute. He is Professor Emeritus of Government at Claremont McKenna College [1] and the Claremont Graduate School [2]. He received his B.A. from Yale University, where he majored in English, in 1939, and holds the Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research.

"He is the author of numerous articles and many books, including his widely acclaimed study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (University of Chicago Press, 1959). His other books include Thomism and Aristotelianism (Greenwood Press, 1979); The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), How to Think About the American Revolution (Carolina Academic Press, 1978); American Conservatism and the American Founding (Carolina Academic Press, 1982); and, most recently, Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question (Regnery Gateway, 1994).

"Professor Jaffa has recently released the first volume of the sequel to his classic Crisis of the House Divided, titled A New Birth of Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000)."

Source: Claremont Institute biography: Harry V. Jaffa. Also posted by the Library of Congress.


"Harry V. Jaffa was a student of Strauss [at the University of Chicago] and has an important connection to Dominionists like Pat Robertson ... Though Harry Jaffa speaks with a high minded sense of political righteousness, Shadia Drury [Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin's Press, 1999 at page 106] exposes his Machiavellian side. Like Strauss, he 'clearly believes that devious and illegal methods are justified when those in power are convinced of the rightness of their ends.' [44] Jaffa and Robertson saw eye to eye on more than one topic: for instance, Jaffa like his host Pat Robertson, found Oliver North to be a hero (and by extension Michael Ledeen) when both North and Ledeen went around the law to provide military aid to the contras. [ibid.]" [3]

"... neo-conservative Dr. Harry Jaffa, a former student of Leo Strauss ..." [4]

"Harry Jaffa would influence both Clarence Thomas (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Bush senior in 1991) and Antonin Scalia (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan on September 26, 1986)." [5]


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