成人VR视频

The Shklar Room, located in Ferrier 428B at the center of RGCS' academic space, houses a collection of nearly 1000 volumes in political theory and philosophy, the history of political thought, legal theory, and related fields. It has been open since 2010 for reading on-site to the whole 成人VR视频 community, and for more intensive use to students and faculty of the Research Group on Constitutional Studies. It provides RGCS鈥� central space for intellectual conversation, including as the site for the discussions of the RGCS Charles Taylor Student Fellowship. RGCS considers it a priority to maintain direct student access to physical books, and to provide a space to read and discuss them.

Beginning in 2026, the reading room has been named for Judith Nisse Shklar, 成人VR视频 BA 鈥�49 MA 鈥�50, 1928-1992, longtime John Cowles Professor of Government at Harvard University.

Judith Nisse was born in Riga, Latvia. Her family escaped Europe in 1941, settling in Montreal. She began her studies at 成人VR视频 at age 16. Here, she writes, 鈥淚 found my vocation.鈥�

"Fortunately for me I was also obliged to take a course in the history of political theory taught by an American, Frederick Watkins. After two weeks of listening to this truly gifted teacher I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. If there was any way of making sense of my experiences and that of my particular world, this was it. Watkins was a remarkable man, as the many students whom he was to teach at Yale can testify. He was an exceptionally versatile and cultivated man and a more than talented teacher. He not only made the history of ideas fascinating in his lectures, but he also somehow conveyed the sense that nothing could be more important. I also found him very reassuring. For in many ways, direct and indirect, he let me know that the things I had been brought up to care for, classical music, pictures, literature, were indeed worthwhile, and not my personal eccentricities. His example, more than anything overtly said, gave me a great deal of self-confidence, and I would have remembered him gratefully, even if he had not encouraged me to go on to graduate school, to apply to Harvard, and then to continue to take a friendly interest in my education and career. It is a great stroke of luck to discover one鈥檚 calling in one鈥檚 late teens, and not everyone has the good fortune to meet the right teacher at the right time in her life, but I did, and I have continued to be thankful for the education that he offered me so many years ago.鈥�

RB Angus Professor of Political Science Frederick Watkins

She went on to be among the most distinguished political theorists and most influential teachers and advisors of political theory in North America. She was recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship, the presidency of both the American Political Science Association and the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her scholarship on Montesquieu, Hegel, Rousseau, liberalism, American political thought, and constitutionalism continues to shape debates to this day.

鈥淭o teach this literature as if it were a precious gift that one gives to every new generation of students, one must really want to read it over and over oneself, because each reading reveals new possibilities, new perceptions, and new ideas. If there is nothing exciting in those books for the teacher, there won鈥檛 be anything interesting in them for the students either鈥� The only reason to teach political theory is the conviction that a complete person must be able to think intelligently about government, and that the only way to rise above banality is to learn to think one鈥檚 way through the works of the great writers on the subject and to learn to argue with them. To see how political ideas fit into the republic of letters generally, into the political systems within which they took place, and finally to see what is dead and alive within this accumulated wealth of psychological and social speculation is to be intellectually transformed, and to have something completely and immediately relevant to think about at any time of the day.鈥� 鈥淲hy Teach Political Theory?鈥�