Dr. James Davison Hunter
Senior Fellow
James Davison Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and the executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He completed his doctorate at Rutgers University in 1981, and he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1983. Widely published and nationally recognized, Dr. Hunter has received numerous literary awards for his work regarding the problem of meaning and moral order in a time of political and cultural change in American life. He has written a wide range of essays, articles, reviews, and books. His most recent book is entitled Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality. The Los Angeles Times named Hunter as a finalist for their 1992 Book Prize for Culture Wars: The Struggle To Define America. In 2004, he was appointed by the White House to a six-year term to the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2005, he won the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters.
Over the years, Hunter’s research findings have been presented to audiences on National Public Radio and C-Span, at the National Endowment for the Arts, and at dozens of colleges and universities around the country including Columbia, Harvard, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Holy Cross College. He also has been a consultant to the White House, the Bicentennial Commission for the U.S. Constitution, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Commission on Civic Renewal.
Publications and Scholarly Work
• Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality (2018)
• To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (2010)
• Is There a Culture War?: A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life (with Alan Wolfe) (2006)
• The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good and Evil (2001)
• Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (1993)
• Culture Wars: The Struggle To Define America (1992)
• American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity (1983)