Rate My Professor Patrick Bracy Bersnak

P. Bracy Bersnak, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and Economics at Christendom College, where he also directs the Politics Practica program. He received his B.A. in History from Miami University in Ohio, an M.A. in Modern European History from The Catholic University of America, and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Theory from The Catholic University of America. Bersnak joined Christendom College as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Economics around 2009, advancing to Associate Professor and then to his current full professorship and chairmanship.

His research focuses on Modern European History, Conservatism in America, Catholic Social Teaching, and Modern Political Thought. Bersnak teaches courses including Introduction to Political Theory, Catholic Social Doctrine, Natural Law: Theory and Practice, Catholicism and American Democracy, Contemporary Political Theory, and Church and Polity. His peer-reviewed publications include “Spirituals and Temporals: Orestes Brownson on Church and Polity” in Catholic Social Science Review 26 (2021): 99-111, and “Our Duty and Our Salvation”: Reflections on Hahn and McGinley's It Is Right and Just in Catholic Social Science Review 27 (2022): 15-20. He has a forthcoming review of Michael P. Krom's Justice and Charity: An Introduction to Aquinas’s Moral, Economic, and Political Thought in Perspectives on Political Science. Bersnak has engaged in public scholarship through contributions to outlets such as The Imaginative Conservative, including an article on The Promise and Failure of Democracy (2015), and discussions on Catholic social teaching in Christendom College podcasts and lectures, such as those addressing conservatism and the Church's encounters with communism.