Hadley Arkes

Hadley P. Arkes (born 1940) is an American political scientist and the Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions emeritus at Amherst College, where he has taught since 1966. He is currently the founder and director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding in Washington, D.C. Childhood Arkes grew up in Chicago "at a time of high danger, in 1940, with the war in Europe already raging, with the Nazis occupying France, and even greater danger now portended, especially for Jews." Until his immediate family moved to an apartment elsewhere in Chicago in 1944, Arkes lived with his grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles. Despite the war and the looming danger for his Jewish people, he describes his childhood as one of blissful freedom: "There was a vast world in which to move, and those fences, occasionally seen, were not barriers to my freedom but fences for my protection." Education Arkes received a B.A. degree at the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago where he was a student of Leo Strauss. Teaching Arkes started teaching at Amherst College in 1966, earning the title of the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence in 1987. He assumed emeritus status in 2016.