Meet the Speaker: Thomas West

Thomas West holds the Paul Ermine Potter and Dawn Tibbetts Potter Endowed Professorship in Politics, Professor of Politics at the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College. Prior to joining the faculty at Hillsdale, he was a Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas, where he taught from 1974 to 2011.

He served in Vietnam as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1969-70. He was Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in 1988-89 and Salvatori Visiting Scholar at Claremont McKenna College from 1990-92.

West’s Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) was the winner of the Bagehot Council’s Paolucci Book Award for 2000, for the best book in American history or politics.

He received his B.A. at Cornell in 1967 and his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University in 1974.