The Center for Political Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University seeks to train a new generation of leaders well-versed in the principles of democracy.

The Center for Political Thought and Leadership aims to spearhead and guide a collaborative movement to reconnect American politics with the timeless political principles that inspired its beginnings. The American Founders, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, were men, not gods. Their immortality stems from their participation in conversations that never age: conversations about the world and our place within it that started with Socrates and continue to occupy us today. 

The CPTL pursues a multidimensional approach to achieving this aim. We support serious research and scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of American political thought, we connect this research to the practical conditions of American political life through a variety of civic education initiatives, and we support the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership in the development of a new generation of leaders who see American political life with the fresh perspective of a liberal education rooted in classic texts. In this way we attempt to provide salutary guidance for American politics at the levels both of theory and practice.