My work has been published in American Political Thought, Laws, The Tocqueville Review, and The Political Science Reviewer. I have held fellowships from the France Chicago Center, Sciences Po, the Barry Center, the Mercatus Center, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
My book manuscript, Beyond Meritocracy: The Pursuit of Excellence in America, argues that liberal education can form the elites we need—ones who relate to their fellow citizens with wisdom, magnanimity, and humility.
See this article featuring Academia Tocqueville, my initiative to teach French political thought to some of the best graduate students in America. Applications for Summer 2025 will open in January.
Please contact me at lfoster1@hillsdale.edu. My writing is available for download at https://hillsdale.academia.edu/LukeFoster.
I am an Assistant Professor of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus.
I hold a PhD from the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, a uniquely interdisciplinary program between the humanities and social sciences. I wrote my dissertation on the civic role of the university in forming elites in democracy. From 2022-24, I was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government.
I research and teach political theory, inspired by such authors as Plato, Montesquieu, and Alexis de Tocqueville. I am passionate about the power of ideas to form culture and souls.
