Ward, Lee 1970-

PERSONAL:

Born January 10, 1970. Education: University of Toronto, B.A.; Brock University, M.A.; Fordham University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Campion College, University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Pkwy., Regina, Saskatchewan S4S 0A2, Canada. E-mail—lee.ward@uregina.ca.

CAREER:

Academic and political scientist. Campion College, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, assistant professor of political science.

WRITINGS:

The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

(Editor, with Ann Ward) The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism, Ashgate (Aldershot, England), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals and academic journals, including American Journal of Political Science, Canadian Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, and Publius: The Journal of Federalism.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lee Ward is an academic and political scientist. Born on January 10, 1970, he started his higher education studies at the University of Toronto, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree. He pursued graduate studies at Ontario's Brock University, earning a master of arts degree. He then went on to complete a Ph.D. at New York's Fordham University. Ward works as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Regina's Campion College. His research interests include political thought from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, modern liberalism theories, and scholarship on John Locke.

Ward published his first book, The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, in 2004. Ward describes this study as an "archaeological project" that starts by analyzing the philosophic origins of Anglo-American Whig political thought in several texts, including John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, Algernon Sidney's Discourses concerning Government, and James Tyrell's Patriarcha Non Monarcha. Ward also looks into the changing thought processes that helped to shape the American Revolution by considering both the radical writings of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as more moderate Whig thinking as recorded by James Otis and John Dickinson. Ward concludes by elucidating Sidney's theory of republicanized constitutionalism, how it was applied by American revolutionaries in their state constitutions, and ultimately how it was replaced in a shift towards Lockean thought.

Douglas Bradburn, writing on H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, commented that "because Ward's study seems interested only in the formulations and questions of an old debate, the work is silent on questions that have most recently animated the best scholarship, namely, the role of political, economic, and constitutional thinking in relation to the rise of the British fiscal/military state in the eighteenth century; the emergence of competing British conceptions of empire; the place and importance of nationalism in political thought; and the place of these ideas within a history of ideas in the Atlantic world." Bradburn pointed out that "another consistent problem with pure histories of ideas is the ambiguity of change. Why do some thinkers make different arguments than others? The historical context provided by Ward is too thin and standard to be little more than stage scenery." Bradburn wrote that "this is high intellectual history of a type still enjoyed by some political scientists, but which will not appeal to the tastes of all historians," adding that "timing is everything, and even if they are fads, current fashions in scholarship seem most pressing. If it had appeared in the early 1990s this might have been a great book. In the end it is a good book, and one that should help clarify, for those willing to engage with it, the flexible potential of eighteenth-century Whig thought." Bardburn summarized that "this is a complex book, but its complexity is more satisfying than infuriating," appending that "to dismiss Ward's book as an artifact of a now largely irrelevant controversy would be sadly myopic. This study is too rich to be so quickly discarded and should prove important as a learned and deeply enlightening study of the philosophical origins and contours of Whig thought." C. Bradley Thompson, reviewing the book in the Historian, summarized that "The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America is one of the best books explaining the intellectual origins of the American Revolution published in the last generation. It is a remarkable achievement."

In 2008 Ward edited The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism with Ann Ward. He has also contributed chapters to edited volumes of academic books. In addition to books, Ward contributes to periodicals and academic journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Canadian Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, and Publius: The Journal of Federalism.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February 1, 2006, Jerome Huyler, review of The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, p. 121.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April 1, 2005, E.R. Gill, review of The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, p. 1471.

Historian, March 22, 2007, C. Bradley Thompson, review of The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, p. 176.

Journal of British Studies, January 1, 2007, Christopher Leslie, review of The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, p. 189.

William and Mary Quarterly, October 1, 2005, Craig Yirush, review of The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, p. 798.

ONLINE

Campion College, University of Regina Web site,http://www.campioncollege.sk.ca/ (August 11, 2008), author profile.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (May 1, 2005), Douglas Bradburn, review of The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America.