Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. I study extremism and moderation in republican politics, with a particular focus on the political thought of jurists and historians.

In my first book, Montesquieu and the Spirit of Rome, I study how Montesquieu addressed the challenges and the temptations that Rome presents for the modern world. Montesquieu used Rome to gain distance from the order that he saw rising around him and he insisted that Rome should be confronted, head on, by anyone who wished to know and to defend liberty well in modern times.

In addition to my book, I have published a book chapter in the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic and articles in the American Political Science Review, the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the History of European Ideas, the History of Political Thought, and the Journal of the History of Ideas.

When not reading or writing or teaching, I parent my children with my wife and our dog, as portrayed in the painting on this page.