Majors & Courses

The “Great Books and Ideas” major and minor allows students to explore the enduring questions of human life and the foundations of Western civilization by drawing upon the masterworks of philosophy, religion, literature, and political thought. Your teachers will be the Hebrew Bible and Plato, Augustine and Maimonides, Dante and Shakespeare, Hobbes and Darwin, Jane Austen and Nietzsche, and many others who wrote some of the most influential books in human history. Students will also explore the lives and legacies of great leaders— from biblical Israel to ancient Greece and Rome, from the rise of Western Europe to the American age, from the defense against modern tyranny to the birth of modern Zionism.

The “Politics, Philosophy, Economics, and Law” major and minor allows students to study the nature of the good life and free society by drawing upon both the masterworks of political and social thought and the most advanced methods of modern social science. PPEL students will move seamlessly from Plato and Aristotle to Adam Smith and F. A. Hayek to supply-side economics and modern constitutional theory. They will explore the great debates at the heart of modern politics and the most creative ideas for promoting human flourishing in the modern age. They will learn how to read difficult texts carefully and how to analyze problems using empirical data and quantitative skills.

The “War, Statecraft, and Strategy” major allows students to study the classical works of strategic thought and the great challenges facing Western nations in the modern age. Our students will immerse themselves in the canon of strategic masterpieces from Thucydides to Clausewitz. They will study the major wars and conflicts that have shaped the history of the Western world—from the clash of Athens and Sparta to the rise of Roman empire, from the wars that created modern Europe to the emergence of the United States as a world power. They will study lives and decisions of great statesmen, diplomats, and military leaders throughout history. They will study some of the major conflicts now ablaze in the modern world. And they will learn the best of modern strategic theory, including the competing schools of thought that shape the political vision and real-world decisions of rival leaders and rival nations.

The “American Government, History, Literature, and Law” major allows students to explore every aspect of American civilization: the moral and political vision of the American founding; the great leaders and key moments that have shaped the American story from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan; the role of religion and religious liberty in shaping American culture; the seminal texts, laws, and policies that shape the American regime; the structure and history of the American political order; and the masterworks of American literature, art, and culture that give life to the American spirit. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates political philosophy, history, literature, law, and biography, our students will understand the meaning of American exceptionalism in full.

*Pending final approval by the University of Florida. Students matriculating in Fall 2025 can begin the core courses for these pending new majors.

The Hamilton Center believes in exploring big thematic questions, drawing upon the riches of literature, philosophy, history, and social science. Here are a few recent examples of courses offered:

• Life, Liberty, and Happiness
• Freedom & Equality
• The Crisis of Liberalism
• Comedy and Citizenship
• What is the Common Good?
• Rhetoric and Leadership
• God and Science
• The Rule of Law
• Ancients and Moderns
• Faith and Reason in Jewish Thought
• Just War
• What is Democracy?

The Hamilton Center believes in the careful reading of great texts. Here are a few examples of some recent courses:

• Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (c. 350 BCE)
• Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532)
• Shakespeare’s Macbeth
• Descartes’ Meditations (1641)
• Thomas Hobbes’s The Leviathan (1651)
• The Federalist Papers (1787-1788)
• Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)

Taught by former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse and other core faculty, the Hamilton Center has created a pioneering course focused on the core elements of American civil discourse:

• What are America’s founding ideals?
• How do we preserve the best of our constitutional republic?
• What is the role of religion in American public life?
• What is the purpose of American federalism?
• What is the role of political parties?
• How do we sustain the civic, communal, and familial institutions at the heart of American democracy?