Peter Berkowitz

Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow
Biography: 

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. At Hoover, he chairs the Jean Perkins Task Force on National Security and Law and cochaired the Boyd and Jill Smith Task Force on Virtues of a Free Society.

He studies and writes about, among other things, constitutional government, conservatism and progressivism in the United States, liberal education, national security and law, and Middle East politics. He is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation (Hoover Institution Press, 2013), Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (Hoover Institution Press, 2012), Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999) and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995).

He is the editor of The Future of American Intelligence (2005), Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution: Debating the Enemy Combatant Cases (2005), the companion volumes Varieties of Conservatism in America (2004) and Varieties of Progressivism in America (2004), and and Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic (2003), all from the Hoover Institution Press. In 2004, with coeditor Tod Lindberg, he launched Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society, a series of concise works on leading issues and controversies.

He has written hundreds of essays, articles, and reviews on many subjects for a variety of publications, including the American Political Science Review, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Claremont Review of Books, Commentary, Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, the London Review of Books, National Review, the New Republic, the New York Post, the New York Sun, PJ Media, Policy Review, the Public Interest, Real Clear Politics, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, the Wilson Quarterly, and the Yale Law Journal.

He holds a JD and a PhD in political science from Yale University; an MA in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and a BA in English literature from Swarthmore College.

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Recent Commentary

Analysis and Commentary

The Demise of Due Process on Campus

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Friday, December 26, 2014

Universities’ mishandling of sexual assault allegations has been making the news -- but not in the way feminist activists and progressive politicians had hoped.

Barack Obama
Analysis and Commentary

Lessons For Obama In A Still Relevant 1964 Text

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Obama administration's embarrassment over the exercise of U.S. power encourages the hesitant, half-hearted use of it, thereby threatening American security and global political freedom.

Analysis and Commentary

Book Review: In a Fragmented Age, Spotlighting the Core of What Unites Us

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Markets
Sunday, November 30, 2014

It is a commonplace belief that contemporary life's dizzying pace of change and its rapid multiplication of choices have fragmented American culture. The conflict between religion and secularism is only the most longstanding and obvious division.

Analysis and Commentary

Assault On Israel Shifts From Warfare To Lawfare

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Friday, November 28, 2014

TEL AVIV -- Last summer Hamas launched against Israel another round of warfare. The Jewish state responded with Operation Protective Edge. In the wake of that 50-day military conflict, international actors are launching against Israel another round of “lawfare.”

Analysis and Commentary

Bret Stephens' Call for Robust U.S. Foreign Policy

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Sunday, November 16, 2014

The disarray of American foreign policy has perilous consequences that are global in reach.

Analysis and Commentary

The Poverty of Obama's Pragmatism

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Sunday, November 9, 2014

During his meteoric rise to the White House, President Obama was touted as a pragmatist -- one who overcomes ideology, transcends partisanship, and focuses on the practical and doable. The stunning repudiation of the president’s leadership on Nov. 4 exhibits the poverty of his brand of pragmatism.

Analysis and Commentary

How the Foreign Language Gap Can Be Bridged

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Saturday, November 1, 2014

In 2008, while campaigning for president in Powder Springs, Ga., then-Senator Barack Obama asserted, “We should have every child speaking more than one language.”

John Kerry
Analysis and Commentary

John Kerry Fails to Hold Hamas Accountable

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Rewarding vicious conduct is a sure-fire method of generating more of it. And wrongly blaming an ally for provoking young men and women to join your brutal adversary is an excellent recipe for harming friends and strengthening enemies. Yet in the struggle against Islamic extremism, the Obama administration has adopted both of these profoundly counterproductive tactics.

Analysis and Commentary

New Republic Falls Short of the True Liberalism It Champions

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Monday, October 13, 2014

Liberalism, most people would agree, stands for the state's responsibility to actively improve the social, economic, and political quality of citizens’ lives. In a more fundamental sense liberalism also denotes certain qualities of mind and character, among them tolerance, generosity, the capacity to engage civilly competing opinions, and a determination to base politics on reason rather than physical force or arbitrary authority.

The Supreme Court
Analysis and Commentary

Lawsuit Casts Harsh Light on Due Process at Colgate

by Peter Berkowitzvia Real Clear Politics
Friday, October 3, 2014

Under ordinary circumstances, the facts alleged by Abrar Faiaz in the legal complaint he filed last spring in U.S. District Court in New York against Colgate University would strain credulity.

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