Aurelian Craiutu

Aurelian Craiutu

Professor, Political Science

Chair, Political Science

Education

  • Ph.D., Princeton University, 1999

About Aurelian Craiutu

Aurelian Craiutu (Ph.D. Princeton, 1999) is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Adjunct Professor in the Lilly Family School of Philanthropic Studies at IUPUI, Indianapolis. He is also affiliated with the Russian and East European Institute, the Institute for West European Studies, and the Ostrom Workshop. Prior to coming to Indiana, he had taught at Duke University (1999-2000) and the University of Northern Iowa (2000-2001). He has also been Visiting Professor at the Université Paris Cité (2023; 2024), University of Paris V Descartes (2019), Central European University, Budapest (2019), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona (2018), University of Paris-II, Panthéon-Assas (2010), and the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania (2004, 2005).Professor Craiutu’s research interests include French political and social thought (Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Constant, Madame de Staël, Guizot, Aron), political ideologies (liberalism, conservatism), and comparative political theory (mostly Central and Eastern Europe). He is the author and editor of a dozen books on modern and contemporary political thought. His first monograph, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2003), won a 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award. It was also translated into French in a revised and enlarged edition as Le Centre introuvable: la pensée politique des doctrinaires sous la Restauration (Plon, 2006). His most recent books are A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830 (Princeton University Press, 2012), Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), and Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge University Press, 2024). He also published two books in Romanian, Elogiul libertǎţii: Eseuri de fiolosofie politicǎ [In Praise of Liberty: Essays in Political Philosophy, 1998), and Elogiul moderaţiei [In Praise of Moderation, 2006; second enlarged edition, 2022].Professor Craiutu has also edited several books, among them François Guizot, History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe (Liberty Fund, 2002); Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (Liberty Fund, 2008); America through European Eyes (co-edited with Jeffrey C. Isaac, Penn State University Press, 2009); Conversations with Tocqueville (co-edited with Sheldon Gellar, Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings (with Jeremy Jennings, Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Jacques Necker, On Executive Power in Great States (Liberty Fund, 2020), Norberto Bobbio: A Life for Democracy on the Battlefield of Ideologies (with Davod Ragazzoni, 2023), as well as Dialog şi libertate: Eseuri în onoarea lui Mihai Şora [Dialogue and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Mihai Şora,1997, edited with Sorin Antohi].Dr. Craiutu's articles and reviews have been published in many academic journals including American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, The Review of Politics, History of Political Thought, Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, and History of European Ideas. He served as Associate Editor of the European Journal of Political Theory (2004-14) and is currently on the editorial board of History of European Ideas. He has received awards, fellowships, and grants from several institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), The National Endowment for Democracy, the James Madison Program at Princeton University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Earhart Foundation. In 2000, he won the American Political Science Association's Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political theory. In 2004, he received a Student Choice Award and an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at Indiana University. Since 2018, he has been Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C.Professor Craiutu is currently working on two book projects. The first one explores key figures in the French political thought from 1830 to 1900; the second one (in collaboration with Daniel Cole and Michael McGinnis) responds to contemporary critics of liberalism and focuses on rethinking the virtues and limits of liberal governance by drawing on the ideas of the Bloomington Schol of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom.