Introducing MODERN AGE’s New Editor

After an extensive national search—international, actually—Modern Age is thrilled to announce that Peter Augustine Lawler will be its new editor. Dr. Lawler, an acclaimed author, scholar, teacher, and commentator, becomes the sixth Modern Age editor as the journal celebrates its sixtieth anniversary.

He succeeds Dr. R. V. Young, who is retiring after nearly a decade editing Modern Age. All of us at Modern Age and ISI are grateful to Dr. Young for his distinguished service and delighted that he will continue to write for Modern Age.

We are thrilled to have Peter Lawler taking the helm at Modern Age. The timing couldn’t be better: in these contentious, confusing times, Modern Age has an extraordinary opportunity to stake out a vision for conservatism in twenty-first-century America. Under Peter’s leadership, Modern Age—in print and online—will become the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes.

Peter Augustine Lawler is the Dana Professor of Government at Berry College and the author or editor of eighteen books. A prolific writer, he blogs at National Review Online and contributes to Modern Age, the Weekly Standard, National Affairs, the New Atlantis, and other publications. Dr. Lawler served on President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics. He is executive editor of the acclaimed scholarly quarterly Perspectives on Political Science and in 2007 received the Weaver Prize for Scholarly Excellence.

Peter is excited by the opportunity to take Modern Age to new levels of influence and reach. “Being appointed editor of Modern Age is a privilege and an honor,” he says. “Few publications have as rich a tradition or pedigree as Modern Age, and its contributions to our intellectual life have been of constant and enduring relevance. My responsibility is to make this distinguished journal not greater but maybe a bit more influential by involving more of our leading scholars and writers and securing a more prominent online and newsstand presence.”

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age has long been “the principal quarterly of the intellectual right,” in the words of George H. Nash, the leading historian of American conservatism. Modern Age applies timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.” Sixty years later, the journal remains true to that approach. University of Oklahoma scholar Wilfred M. McClay recently called Modern Age “required reading for those who want to engage conservative thought at a high level.”

Peter Lawler’s first issue will appear in April. If you are not already a subscriber, please be sure to subscribe here. You don’t want to miss what Peter has in store for Modern Age readers. His first issue will appear in April, and he has already lined up leading scholars and writers to write for Modern Age. This distinguished publication will play a much larger role in the national debate.

Charlie Copeland is publisher of Modern Age and president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.