Welcome New Professor Dr. Seth N. Jaffe

Professor S.N. Jaffe

Professor S.N. Jaffe

John Cabot University is pleased to welcome new professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Dr. Seth N. Jaffe, who will begin teaching in January 2017.

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Professor Jaffe has a B.A. in Comparative Politics and Philosophy from Bowdoin College, an M.Sc. degree in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto. He has taught at both Bowdoin College and the University of Toronto, where he was the inaugural Bloom Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in Classical Thought.

His research focuses on Classical Political Thought, International Relations, and the History of International Political Thought. Overall, he has wide-ranging research interests in Greek conceptions of human nature, which are political (or moral) psychologies, and more specialized interests in the phenomenon of political motion – war and civil war – as it was conceptualized by the writers and thinkers of the 5th and 4th Centuries BC in Greece. He is also interested in how classical frameworks can enrich contemporary debates in the social sciences.

Professor Jaffe has received research support from the Center for International Cooperation of Freie Universität Berlin and from the Excellence Cluster TOPOI as well from the Earhart Foundation. He is an Associate Researcher of the Berlin Thucydides Center and a frequent Visiting Senior Associate Member of the American School for Classical Studies at Athens. His work has appeared in various volumes on Thucydides, and his first book, Character and Contest – Thucydides on the Outbreak of War is forthcoming from Oxford University Press (2017).

“I am truly looking forward to becoming a member of the JCU community. It is rare to find an institution deeply committed to the liberal arts that has so many wonderful resources for the study of classical and contemporary politics,” says Professor Jaffe.

Learn more about the Department of Political Science and International Affairs.