Patrick J. Deneen

Patrick J. Deneen is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, where he holds the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Chair of Constitutional Studies. His work is in political theory, with a focus on liberalism and its critics, Tocqueville, and American constitutional thought.

Academic Career

Deneen holds a B.A. in English literature and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Rutgers University; his departmental page does not give years for either degree. His dissertation received the American Political Science Association’s Leo Strauss Award for best dissertation in political philosophy in 1995.

From 1995 to 1997 he worked as a speechwriter and special advisor to the director of the United States Information Agency. He was an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University from 1997 to 2005, and then Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University from 2005 to 2012. He has been at Notre Dame since, and now holds the rank of professor.

Published Works

Why Liberalism Failed was published by Yale University Press in 2018 in its Politics and Culture series, with a paperback edition following on 26 February 2019. The book argues that liberalism’s difficulties are not deviations from its premises but consequences of them.

Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future was published on 6 June 2023 by Sentinel, a Penguin Random House imprint.

His earlier books include The Odyssey of Political Theory, Democratic Faith (Princeton University Press, 2005), and Conserving America? Essays on Present Discontents (St. Augustine’s Press, 2016). His departmental page also lists American Odyssey: What an Ancient Story Reveals about Our Divided Souls (Creed & Culture, 2026).

Reception

In June 2018, Barack Obama posted a reading list to Facebook — one he described as “admittedly a slightly heavier” set than his summer reading — that included Why Liberalism Failed. Obama wrote: “I don’t agree with most of the author’s conclusions, but the book offers cogent insights into the loss of meaning and community that many in the West feel, issues that liberal democracies ignore at their own peril.” The exchange is the most-cited instance of the book being engaged with from outside the intellectual current it is usually associated with.

Essays and Direct Publishing

Deneen has written for First Things, whose author index carries pieces including “Unsustainable Liberalism,” “The Ignoble Lie,” “Replace the Elite,” and the inaugural Neuhaus Lecture, “We Are All Postliberals Now.” He also wrote regularly for The American Conservative, whose dated index runs from January 2014 to July 2020 and includes a ten-part 2015 seminar series on liberalism and conservatism. That magazine’s byline note from the period describes him as “David A. Potenziani Memorial Associate Professor of Constitutional Studies” — the associate-professor form of the chair he now holds as a full professor.

Deneen publishes a Substack, currently titled What I Saw In America and described there as “a place for ruminations about America and beyond, through the lens of political philosophy.” The same Substack hosts The Theoria Podcast.

What Is Not Established Here

This audit removed several claims for want of a source that met the project’s standard.

The page previously dated his B.A. to 1986; his own departmental page gives no year for either degree, and no other record fetched here supplies one. The claim that he “moved to the University of Notre Dame in 2012 and was promoted to full professor in 2018” has been reduced to what the record supports: his Georgetown appointment ran through 2012 and he now holds the rank of professor at Notre Dame; the 2018 promotion date is not evidenced anywhere fetched.

The claim that Why Liberalism Failed “was translated into over twenty languages” was removed. The Library of Congress name-authority file confirms at least one translation (Czech, with its own name-title authority record), but no source fetched here supports a count.

The page named his Substack newsletter Theoria. The publication’s own about page names it What I Saw In America; “Theoria” is the title of the podcast hosted on it. The page also asserted a significant presence on Twitter/X; no account was verified, so twitter-x was removed from primaryPlatforms.

Of the four outlets the page listed as venues for his writing, First Things and The American Conservative were confirmed against those magazines’ own author indexes and are retained. The New Atlantis and Front Porch Republic were removed: no author index for either was fetched and confirmed in this pass, so their inclusion is unevidenced rather than disproved. The assertion that he “has participated in public debates on topics including corporate social responsibility” was also removed, as it named no debate, date or counterpart.

The closing section claiming his critique “generated significant discussion across the political spectrum” and “prompted responses from scholars, journalists, and public figures” was cut as an unattributed characterization. The single documented instance of such engagement that could be verified — Obama’s 2018 post — is stated above with its source.