William Galston is a political theorist. He is the Saul I Stern Professor of Civic Engagement and the director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the School of Public Policy

University of Maryland School of Public Policy

The Maryland School of Public Policy is one of 14 schools at the University of Maryland, College Park and the only policy school in the Washington, D.C.-area affiliated with a major research university....

 of University of Maryland, College Park

University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...

. In addition, he is a Senior Fellow of Governance at the Brookings Institution

Brookings Institution

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and...

. He was also a senior adviser to President of the United States

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 on domestic policy, and has also been employed by the presidential campaigns of Al Gore

Al Gore

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

 and Walter Mondale

Walter Mondale

Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

. Since 1995, Galston has served as a founding member of the Board of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and as chair of the Campaign's Task Force on Religion and Public Values. He previously taught in the department of Government at the University of Texas-Austin.

In political philosophy

Political philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...

, Galston has written influential works on political pluralism and on domestic policy issues in liberal

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

.

Galston was a student of classicist and political philosopher Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss was a political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated to the United States...

.

Selected works

• Justice and the Human Good, University of Chicago Press, 1980.
• Liberal Purposes, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Liberal Pluralism, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• The Practice of Liberal Pluralism, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Public Matters: Essays on Politics, Policy and Religion, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

External links

• The School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland
• The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
• The Brookings Institution