Jerome Foss

Jerome C. Foss, who received his PhD in political science at Baylor in 2011, is  Professor of Politics at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses in political theory, politics and literature, and American politics. In addition to his numerous journal articles and book chapters, Foss has authored two books, most recently Flannery O’Connor and the Perils of Governing Tenderness (Lexington) shows how her stories of characters who struggle with divine grace convey insights on philosophy, history, and politics instructive to citizens of modern democracies. Foss’s first book, Rawls and the Transformation of Modern Politics (Cambria Press) argues that Rawls's pragmatism seeks to elevate progressive judges as exemplars of public reason, in the service of transforming the constitutional government of the Founders into a rationalist, egalitarianism democracy at the expense of liberty, self-government, and natural rights.

Foss is also the Endowed Director of the Saint Vincent Center for Catholic Thought and Culture. His responsibilities include editing the in-house journal Conversatio, helping with the Summer Institute in Rome and the Benedictine Leadership Studies Program.. In partnership with Fides et Ratio Seminars, Foss helps lead a week-long summer seminar. He also directs the interdisciplinary minor in Sanctity of Life. 

Foss received the SGA Faculty award in 2021, the college’s prestigious Thoburn Award for excellence in teaching in 2021, and the college’s Projektenmacher Award for his work directing the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture in 2022. He serves on the Board of the Society for Catholic Social Scientists and is a Fellow of the Center for Political and Economic Thought.