Jeremy Fortier

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science

Department/Office Information

Political Science

Persson Hall

TR 12:00pm - 1:30pm (Persson Hall 012)

Contact

jfortier@colgate.edu

Jeremy Fortier's work circles around the question of how people arrive at and justify their political positions while remaining aware of their cognitive limits, biases and past failures of judgment. To that end, his research has focused on the autobiographical or self-reflective writings of a wide range of authors who revised their positions over the course of their careers.

"Why to Be a Civic Constitutionalist"

This paper argues that (a) civic constitutionalism is a cohesive body of scholarship (b) it offers a detailed challenge to Hélène Landemore’s account of how to fix democratic politics, while at the same time (c) suggesting how to blend compelling features of Landemore’s account with a more traditionally-grounded approach (d) consequently, democratic theorists of all sorts should consider becoming civic constitutionalists.

Advance version of the paper

“‘To Affirm While Resisting’: Ralph Ellison and Friedrich Nietzsche on Overcoming History” in Nietzsche and Politicized Identities, edited by Rebecca Bamford & Allison Merrick (SUNY Press, forthcoming).

Comment on Matthew Meyer, Nietzsche's Free Spirit Works for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

“Languages of Freedom: Danielle Allen on W.E.B. Du Bois and the Declaration of Independence,” American Political Thought 10: 271-282.

The Challenge of Nietzsche: How to Approach His Thought. University of Chicago Press.

A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of 2020.
Author-meets-critics symposium in The Review of Politics 83: 398-417.
Interviews about the book for The Lost Angeles Review of Books and The Political Theory Review podcast.

“On Steven Pinker’s Hobbesian Liberalism,” Polity 50: 460-484.

“Can Liberalism Lose the Enlightenment?” Journal of Politics 72: 1003-1013.

Prior to Colgate, Fortier taught at Claremont McKenna College and the City College of New York. In light of that background teaching equally excellent students at two very different types of institutions, his courses are designed to help students reflect on what makes their education distinct, and the principles that ought to inform higher education more generally.