The Kirk Center - Gleaves Whitney, Senior Fellow

The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal

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Gleaves Whitney, a writer, lecturer, and historian, was named the first permanent Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 1995.

Currently Mr. Whitney is director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University in southwestern Michigan. Before his appointment to the Hauenstein Center, he was senior speechwriter and historian for Michigan Governor John Engler. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Center for the American Idea in Houston.

A graduate of Colorado State University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, Mr. Whitney has done graduate work at the Universität Konstanz (Germany), the University of Oxford, and the University of Michigan.

In 1993 he served on Governor Engler’s task force on education, whose work led to the enactment of far-reaching reforms that the New York Times called “the most dramatic in the nation.” In 2001, he helped establish the new Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries. He currently serves on the Michigan Humanities Council and the State Historical Records Advisory Board. In addition to his work in politics and history, he is gaining a reputation as a leading authority on Catholic humanists in the twentieth century.

Mr. Whitney has written, edited, or contributed to several books, including John Engler: The Man, the Leader & the Legacy (2002), American Presidents: Farewell Messages to the Nation (2002), and the revised edition of Russell Kirk’s The American Cause (2003). He is currently writing a companion volume to Dr. Kirk’s The Roots of American Order, on which he frequently lectures, as well as a book on the historian Christopher Dawson. His op-ed pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, The New York Times, National Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Policy Review, Imprimis, and many others.

He lives in Lansing, Michigan.

Transcript of Mr. Whitney's December 1999 lecture for the Russell Kirk Memorial Lecture Series at the Heritage Foundation: “Recovering Rhetoric: How Ideas, Language, and Leadership Can Triumph in Postmodern Politics” (PDF format also available through this link).