Rate My Professor Jeffrey Church

Jeffrey Church served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston from 2019 to 2025, following appointments as Associate Professor (2013-2019), Lence Distinguished Teaching Chair (2017-2020), and Assistant Professor (2009-2013). He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame in 2008, an M.A. from the same institution in 2005, and a B.A. from Ursinus College in 2001, graduating as Salutatorian and inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Prior to joining UH, he held a position as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Duke University from 2008 to 2009. Additionally, he served as Honors College Society Fellow at UH from 2010 onward.

Church's academic interests center on modern political thought, encompassing the philosophies of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, along with liberal and democratic theory. His key publications include the award-winning Infinite Autonomy: The Divided Individual in the Political Thought of G.W.F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche (Penn State University Press, 2012), recipient of the American Political Science Association Foundations of Political Theory First Book Award in 2013; Nietzsche’s Culture of Humanity: Beyond Aristocracy and Democracy in the Early Period (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Nietzsche’s Unfashionable Observations: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2019); Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press, 2022); and The Spirit of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, which he co-edited (Lexington Press, 2023). He has co-translated and edited Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Contribution to the Correction of the Public’s Judgments on the French Revolution (SUNY Press, 2021) and The Doctrine of the State (Oxford University Press, 2025). His articles have appeared in leading journals such as American Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Theory, Review of Politics, and Journal of Nietzsche Studies.

Church's contributions have earned him the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Distinguished Faculty Award at the University of Houston in 2023, National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship in 2019, UH Award for Excellence in Research in 2019, and Ross M. Lence Teaching Excellence Award in 2013. He has also received the APSA Centennial Grant in 2022, DAAD Faculty Research Grant in 2012, and multiple internal UH research grants including the Research Progress Grant in 2017.