Walter Berns

Walter Berns
Walter Berns (center) received a 2005 National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.
Born	May 3, 1919 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	January 10, 2015 Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Residence	Chevy Chase, Maryland, U.S.
Alma mater	Reed College University of Chicago
Occupation	Political philosopher
Spouse(s)	Irene Lyons

Walter Berns (May 3, 1919 – January 10, 2015) was an American constitutional law and political philosophy professor. He was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor emeritus at Georgetown University.

Berns was raised in Chicago, where, as late as 1926, he was impressed by "Union soldiers in the [Memorial Day] parade feebly carrying the standard." He attended Reed College and the General Course at the London School of Economics and Political Science—"where [he] learned little, other than to love London"—and received his bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa. World War II intervened, and "there was no question but that [he] would serve in WW II." He served in the U.S. Navy from 1941 to 1945. After the war, he lived and worked as a waiter in Taos, New Mexico, where he befriended Frieda Lawrence. She persuaded him that he did not have a future as a writer, so Berns returned to academia. He studied for his Ph.D. under Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he also became lifelong friends with Herbert Storing. He taught political philosophy at Louisiana State University (1953–1956) and Yale University (1956–1959). In 1959, he joined the government department at Cornell University.

Berns taught at Cornell from 1959 to 1969 and chaired the Department of Government from 1963 to 1967. He was a popular professor, "applauded after every lecture in their large courses, not merely after the last lecture of the semester, which was the normal student acknowledgment of a course well taught." Berns became friends with his faculty colleague Allan Bloom during these years. He was less than impressed by the attitudes of the faculty class at the time: