2022 First Things Lecture: By the Sweat of Your Brow You Shall Labor

Please join us on 8 March for the 2022 First Things Annual Lecture given by Professor Josh Mitchell of Georgetown University. The title this year is “By the Sweat of Your Brow You Shall Labor.”

Identity politics — the politics of innocence and transgression — has become a fever in America.  It is the reigning orthodox on this left, to which conservatives have no clear answer.  In this lecture Dr. Josh Mitchell will survey longer developments in the conservative movement and more recent politics, with a view to clarifying the crisis in which American citizens now find themselves.  Dr. Mitchell will then consider an alternative to the politics of innocence and transgression, namely, the politics of competence, and explain why a healthy American future may be built around it.

Co-sponsored by First Things magazine.

You can access a livestream here.

Dr. Josh Mitchell is currently professor of political theory at Georgetown University. He has been Chairman of the Government Department, and was on the start-up team for Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. During the 2008-10 academic years, Dr. Mitchell took Leave from Georgetown, and was the Acting Chancellor of The American University of Iraq – Sulaimani. His research interest lies in the relationship between political thought and theology in the West. He has published widely, and his books include, Not By Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Thought (1993); The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future (1995); Plato’s Fable: On the Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times (2006); Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age (2013); and most recently, American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time (2020). In addition to teaching at Georgetown University, Dr. Mitchell writes extensively about contemporary American politics, and is an avid conservationist, committed to stewardship on his small farm on the Eastern Shore.