Biography
Claes Ryn is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Distinguished Senior Scholar and Founding Director Emeritus of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at the Catholic University of America, where he was also Chairman of his Department. He has taught also at the University of Virginia and Georgetown University.
His scholarship has focused on ethics and politics, politics and culture, constitutionalism, international relations, the history of Western political thought, and epistemology. His many books include Democracy and the Ethical Life: A Philosophy of Politics and Community; America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest For Empire; A Common Human Ground: Universality and Particularity in a Multicultural World; and, most recently, The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken.
He has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia, especially China, where he has been seven times at the invitation of leading academic institutions such as Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Foreign Affairs University, and Beijing Normal University. In May 2000 he delivered the Distinguished Foreign Scholar Lectures at Peking University — a three-part series titled “Unity Through Diversity: Humanity’s Higher Ground” — which the university published in Chinese translation as a book. In 2012 Ryn was named Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University. Three of his books and many of his articles have been published in translation in China.
He was president of the Philadelphia Society, Chairman and co-founder of the National Humanities Institute, and President and co-founder of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. His full record of publications, honors, and academic service is available in his complete C.V.
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