Live from the APSA convention

What, you may understandably ask, is APSA? It is the American Political Science Association — the professional academic society of the political science professiorate — and it is celebrating its centenary at its annual convention commencing today and continuing over the weekend.
This year the APSA convention is meeting in Philadelphia, where I have come to attend the panels sponsored by the Claremont Institute. The Claremont Insititute is itself an organization dedicated in its every fiber to opposing the fundamental tenets of modern political science in favor of the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Within APSA, the Institute is a kind of rump resistance movement.
This year’s Claremont panels are devoted to the theme of Progressivism in American politics — to “trac[ing] how Progressivism and the political science that developed from that political movement consciously sought to subvert the American Founding principles of constitutionalism, limited government, separation of powers, and natural rights.” The papers presented at the Institute’s panels this year are to constitute a book on Progressivism indicating how current political science serves the political agenda of that revolutionary movement.
In his column introducing the great new issue of the Claremont Review of Books, which is hot off the press, CRB editor and Claremont College Professor Charles Kesler has a timely comment on Progressivism and the California free-for-all : “Recalling Politcal Science.”
I hope to find at least a few nuggets of interest to share from the Claremont panels over the next few days. In the meantime, I can report that Hush Puppies appear to have lost none of their popularity among the university crowd attending the convention. Footwear, at least, is one area in which the political science profession is not much interested in “progress.”

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