Lindsay Mahon Rathnam

Bachelor of Humanities, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Duke Kunshan University

B.Hum Graduate 2007

What was your experience like in the program and how has your degree helped your career?

I’m an assistant professor of political theory at Duke Kunshan University, a liberal arts college located in China and founded through collaboration between Duke University and Wuhan University. My academic work, which has covered ideas ranging from the ancient notion of freedom of speech (isegoria) and its contemporary applications, to the underappreciated role of Herodotus in shaping Hannah Arendt’s thought, has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Review of Politics, and Polis. My forthcoming book, In Search of Flourishing: Culture, Judgment, and Politics in Herodotus’ Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2027) argues that Herodotus should be considered a serious political thinker and philosopher – and that his defense of political freedom and human dignity offers a profound resource for our own times. My work has also appeared in the Globe & Mail and has been featured on CBC Ideas.

Now that I’m a professor, it has become even clearer to me just how valuable my time at the College of the Humanities was. Not only did it inspire my own career and introduce me to writers and thinkers I still study and teach myself, but my time at the college really taught me how to think well. We read demanding yet exciting books, from an array of times, cultures, and disciplines, and in being asked to take these books and ideas seriously, we were challenged to think, to get outside of ourselves, to see the humanity in the Humanities – and in ourselves and others.

For this reason, then, there is something profoundly liberatory about the education offered by the College; time spent with old books and ideas might in fact prepare students well for the uncertainties of the future – that reading Aristotle on human flourishing, for example, might give us something novel and important to say about AI. I am so glad that I was lucky enough to spend my undergraduate days at the College.