Jeffrey J. Poelvoorde
Dr. Poelvoorde passed away on December 26, 2023.Dr. Poelvoorde retired in 2022.
Author of essays in several anthologies, including Power, Principles, and Interest (Ginn Press, 1985), How Does the Constitution Protect Religious Freedom? (AEI, 1988), Lessons of the Bush Defeat (Ashbrook, 1992), The Election of 1992 (Westview, 1992), The Clinton Presidency (Ashbrook, 1993), American Conservative Opinion Leaders (1990), Readings in American Government (Kendall-Hunt, 2002) and an article, “Women in the Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne” in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy (1994). He was working on two publishing projects: a book on Death based upon his special-topics course “On the Personal and Political Meaning of Death in Scripture, Philosophy, Literature and Film” and a work updating his dissertation on “executive privilege.”
He was a contract speech writer for the Secretaries of Defense under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, a staff associate at the George Marshall Institute, executive board member of the South Carolina Humanities Council, President of the Westgate Training and Consultation Network, and served as President of the South Carolina Chapter of the National Association of Scholars.
Active in many Jewish communities as a scholar and community leader, Dr. Poelvoorde has lectured on and taught courses on both Jewish and political topics in local and regional churches and synagogues. He lead a weekly seminar on Alexis deTocqueville’s Democracy in America for adult members of the Jewish community in Charlotte, NC.
Dr. Poelvoorde taught many special topics courses at Converse on topics ranging from death, love, Shakespeare, science fiction, Don Quixote and J.R.R. Tolkien to war and peace, American musicals, Nazism and Harry Potter. He received the Kathryne Amelia Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000.
Poelvoorde was a featured lecturer at Princeton University’s James Madison Center seminars on the Constitution and Constitutional Development, exploring the major issues and themes of the Founding and the controversies that have attended the intersection of politics and the Constitution over the last two centuries.