Benson Center appoints new Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy

Benson Center appoints new Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy

Joseph Bottum will join the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy in fall 2025. Bottum is the former literary editor of the Weekly Standard and editor of First Things. He has been called the “poetic voice” who “shaped the minds of a generation” in National Review and “a poet and critic and essayist with a sideline in history and philosophy” in the New York Times. His interests and expertise range widely across philosophy, literature, and the social condition. Among other courses, he will teach classes on “The Rise and Fall of the Novel” and “Philosophical Mysticism.”

Bottum is the author of An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (Image/Doubleday, 2014). The book is among the most insightful diagnoses of the challenges facing the United States in the twenty-first century: the historical origins of the decline of mainline Protestantism, the consequences of new technology and forms of communication, and what these might mean for spirituality, comity, and prosperity in American life, now and in the future. He has written hundreds of essays and reviews for periodicals online and in print, and is the author of eight books, including The Decline of the Novel (St. Augustine’s Press, 2019) and most recently Frankincense, Gold, and Myrrh: A Christmas Chrestomathy (St. Augustine’s Press, 2024).

Bottum shared the Christopher Award for his children’s book The World is Awake (Zonderkidz/HarperCollins, 2018) and delivered the 2014 Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition, he has given public lectures at Princeton, Yale, Georgetown, Duke, Notre Dame, and many other colleges and universities. He also served as the host for Book Talk on Radio America, Book-TV on C-Span, and the Library of Liberty.

Bottum holds an A.B. in philosophy from Georgetown University and Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College. From 1991-1993 he was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University in Maryland. He has been a monthly literary columnist at Crisis magazine (1995-1998), the Washington Free Beacon (2015-2019), the London Spectator (2018-2019), and the New York Sun (2022-2024). He held several appointments from 2017 to 2024 at Dakota State University in South Dakota, including Director of the Classics Institute, Visiting Professor of Computer and Cyber Sciences, and Associate Professor of Philosophy. He recently co-founded the poetry newsletter Poems Ancient and Modern on Substack.