Associate Professor of Politics Mark Kremer joined the Hillsdale College faculty this fall.

Kremer previously taught at the college as a visiting professor in the politics department. He also lectured on “Love and Marriage in Machiavelli’s ‘Mandragola’” for the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship in February 2020. 

“The school has an intellectual mission that is not a politically correct ideological mission,” Kremer said. “I believe everything that the school does.” 

Kremer said he hopes to teach at Hillsdale for the rest of his career.

Political philosophy is Kremer’s specialty. He studies different historical thinkers and the forms of government they proposed, writing books like “Plato and Xenophon: Apologies,” which was published in 2006. 

In 2017, he published “Romanticism and Civilization: Love, Marriage, and Family in Rousseau’s Julie” through Lexington Books. 

“I wrote it as a challenge to contemporary liberalism because it has subordinated science to sexuality and equality,” Kremer said. 

Kremer spent his early years in Ontario, Canada, right outside of Toronto. He received his Bachelor of Arts in both political science and philosophy and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Toronto in 1985 and 1986 respectively. He continued his education at the University of Chicago, earning a doctorate in political science in 1995. 

Kremer said that he has always had a passion for political philosophy, as it focuses on both the best form of government as well as the individual’s rights within the government. 

Kremer began his teaching career as a lecturer at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He then taught core curriculum at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts, before teaching as a member of the political science department for Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia.  

While at KSU, he established a great books curriculum, teaching until 2019 when he became a visiting professor at Hillsdale. His time at the college was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, and he returned to KSU before settling at Hillsdale this fall. 

This semester, Kremer is teaching two sections of U.S. Constitution, part of the college core curriculum.

“I really love his class,” freshman Carver Means said. “He always brings out such great commentary about what we read.”

He is also advising Bryan Richardson, a fifth year Ph.D. candidate, on his doctoral thesis about Rousseau. 

“The way he taught Rousseau fascinated me,” Richardson said. “Dr. Kremer is special at being extremely clear in the material he teaches, and the way he communicates the literature helps people understand the book.” 

Kremer said he enjoys the size of Hillsdale and its academic culture.

“I was coming from a large state school with over 45,000 students,” Kremer said. “What I like about Hillsdale is that it’s a small private school with a sense of community. People are interested in one another’s ideas. It is more intellectually intense.”

Next semester, Kremer said he will be teaching courses about the U.S. Constitution, Shakespeare, and a graduate course focused on Rousseau.