The Soul of the Claremont School

Glenn Ellmers, a former student of Harry V. Jaffa associated with the conservative Claremont school of thought, has produced an exhaustive study of his mentor. Ellmers has pored over Jaffa’s available writings, including a dozen or so published books, numerous articles and newspaper columns, and boxes of unpublished correspondence stored at Hillsdale College and in the Claremont Institute. I am calling attention to this biographical achievement not because Jaffa and his doctrines represent what I would consider a genuine theoretical right, but because one is required to explain rather than merely dismiss success.