Session One (85 minutes) RealAudio: Click Here to Listen   Help Listening
Session Two (116 minutes) RealAudio: Click Here to Listen   Help Listening

In this seminar, we will discuss the careers of America’s two greatest abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Through an analysis of their tactics, strategy and, especially, their political rhetoric, we will try to understand their divergent views of moral and political statesmanship. In particular, we will examine their contrasting understandings of human nature, American constitutionalism, and their resulting different hopes for democratic politics.

Richard S. Ruderman is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. He specializes in political philosophy and American Political Thought. Dr. Ruderman’s essays on Aristotle, statesmanship, Homer, and liberal education have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and elsewhere. His studies of William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass will appear in History of American Political Thought and "Phronesis": Studies in the Nature and Scope of Prudential Leadership. He is currently working on a book on Statesmanship in Liberal Democracies. Dr. Ruderman received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

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