Bryan Garsten

Bryan Garsten is Professor of Political Science and Humanities and the Faculty Director of the Yale Center for Civic Thought. His award-winning book, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment, explores the history of political thought on rhetoric and argues for a politics of persuasion. In recent research he investigates fundamental tensions in the theory and practice of representative government and constitutional democracy, reflecting on Aristotle, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Rousseau, the Federalists, Benjamin Constant, and Marx, among others. Recent work includes “A Liberalism of Refuge,” one of the Journal of Democracy’s most-read articles of 2024. 

Garsten has long been interested in promoting liberal education. He coordinated the creation of a core curriculum for Yale-NUS College in Singapore and was lead-writer of a report, A New Community of Learning, about how that college approached fundamental challenges in higher ed. He chaired Yale’s Humanities Program, revitalized its link to its alumni, and set it on a path to successfully expand both the Directed Studies program and the major in the Humanities. He has been a member of the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education and the Harvard Higher Education Leaders Forum.

He has also worked to promote thoughtful public discourse and demonstrate the civic value of liberal education. At Yale, he co-founded Citizens Thinkers Writers, a program for New Haven high school students, in 2016, and the Civic Thought Initiative in 2019. In July 2025 Yale brought these initiatives together and elevated them into the Yale Center for Civic Thought. Garsten is a member of the Alliance for Civics in the Academy and of the Civic Collaboratory of Citizens University. In 2025 he will be inducted into the American Academy of Sciences & Letters.