Claes G. Ryn is Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America, where he was also Chairman of his Department. His many books include Democracy and the Ethical Life, Will, Imagination and Reason, A Common Human Ground and The New Jacobinism, now in an expanded edition. Ryn is Chairman of the National Humanities Institute and President of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. A frequent visitor to China, he was recently named Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University. In 2000 he gave the Distinguished Foreign Scholar Lectures at Beijing University.