WALTERS MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES

Part 2: “Alexis de Tocqueville in America”

Olivier Zunz (University of Virginia)

Presenting: “The Great Debate between Alexis de Tocqueville and Astolphe de Custine on the Political Fortunes of America and Russia”  

Olivier Zunz is James Madison Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia. He has held visiting appointments at the Collège de France and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, among others. Zunz earned his BA at Université de Paris X-Nanterre and his third-cycle doctorate and state doctorate from the Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne. He has received fellowships and research grants from the Ford Foundation, Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. He has authored or edited 12 books, including The Changing Face of Inequality (1982); Making America Corporate, 1870-1920 (1990); and Why the American Century? (1998). His Philanthropy in America: A History (2012) is the first book to explore in depth the 20th-century growth of this unique phenomenon. His most recent book is The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville (2022). In 2011 Zunz was named Officier of the French Ordre National du Mérite by the French Government.