WALTERS MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES

Part 1 of “Alexis de Tocqueville in America”

Sarah Gustafson (The Catholic University of America)

Presenting: “Democratic Well-being and Democratic Welfare: Tocqueville’s Complex Account of the Welfare State” 

Sarah Gustafson is Assistant Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. She earned her BA from Davidson College, MA from University College of London, and her PhD in Political Theory from the Department of Government, Harvard University. Her research focus is Alexis de Tocqueville and nineteenth-century political thought, with additional interests in Ancient and Medieval Political Philosophy, contemporary and normative political theory, virtue ethics, Catholic Social and Political Thought, and Ethics and Business. Her dissertation examines Tocqueville’s concept of charity, especially its relationship to his accounts of self-interest rightly understood, associations, and welfare. Gustafson is no stranger to Furman. In January 2024, she accompanied Dr. Robert Putnam to the Tocqueville platform where they presented their paper “Two Voyages of Discovery: How the 1831 Journeys of Darwin and Tocqueville Changed our Understanding of the World.”