[2] His notable former students include: Mark Blitz, James Ceaser, Tom Cotton,[3] Andrew Sullivan,[4] Charles R. Kesler, Alan Keyes, William Kristol,[5] Clifford Orwin, Paul Cantor, Mark Lilla, Francis Fukuyama, Sharon Krause, Bruno Maçães, and Shen Tong.
[6] His father, Harvey Mansfield Sr., had been editor of the American Political Science Review and was the Ruggles Professor Emeritus of Public Law and Government at Columbia University at the time of his death in 1988 at the age of 83.
He argues that politics does not merely consist of liberal and conservative options, but rather, they are fundamentally opposed to each other, with each side defending its own interest as it attempts to appeal to the common good (2).
It informs you of the leading possibilities of human life, and by giving you a sense of what has been tried and what is now dominant, it tells you where we are now in a depth not available from any other source" (7–8).
In his book Taming the Prince, Mansfield traces the modern doctrine of executive power to Niccolò Machiavelli.
[10] Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Social media Miscellaneous Other In response to multiculturalism on college campuses, Mansfield has defended the importance of preserving and teaching courses on Western civilization, even proposing a survey course that selects a dozen or so books that capture the principal themes.
Mansfield believes that understanding Western civilization is important because the books that explain it deal with problems associated with the human condition.
[12][13][14] In his lecture, Mansfield suggests "two improvements for today’s understanding of politics arising from the humanities ... first ... to recapture the notion of thumos in Plato, and Aristotle... [and] ...second ... the use of names—proper to literature and foreign to science".
[14] This is a reference to his own philosophy, which forbids discounting the wisdom of the past simply because those who spoke it lived a long time ago.
Also in the book, Mansfield subjects the concept of manliness to a test in which he refers for support of his argument to such diverse authorities as Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Rudyard Kipling, Ernest Hemingway, and Naomi Wood.
[19] Nussbaum accuses Mansfield of misreading, or failing to read, many feminist and non-feminist texts, in addition to the ancient Greek and Roman classics he cites.
Mansfield asserts, she contends, that a woman can resist rape only with the aid of "a certain ladylike modesty enabling her to take offense at unwanted encroachment."
"[20][21] Nussbaum, who testified in the same trial against Amendment 2, later remarked that Mansfield's source for his claim that gay and lesbian people were unhappy was not contemporary social science research but the great books of the Western tradition (Plato, Tocqueville, Rousseau, etc.).
[22] Mansfield has voiced criticism of grade inflation at Harvard University and claims it is due in part to affirmative action, but says he cannot show its causal effect.
The debate attracted a "massive audience" of a thousand Harvard students, requiring its campus venue to be changed twice before it could take place in Harvard's Sanders Theater, prompting Professor Sandel to comment, "This puts to rest the myth that this generation has a political apathy, and apathy to political debates.
"[29] In an interview with the Hoover Institution, Mansfield claimed that college professors are too quick to label students as exceptional.