solutions he came up with, but the tireless quest to find a goal for culture and education in a world that had lost its traditional bearings, and was headed into the long twilight of nihilism. Though he may not have discovered a goal that we find compelling today, he brings home the danger, especially for education, of doing without any goal at all" Freedom after the Cold War: Franco's work on Hegel seeks to overcome the dichotomy between positive and negative liberty as articulated by western political thinkers like Isaiah Berlin during the cold war.Societas and universitas: These two poles anchor Franco's thought. The former, as expressed by Oakeshott, refers to a "band of eccentrics" bound together by no common purposes. Universitas refers to a political order conceived as a people consecrated to a collective enterprise. Franco's work on Oakeshott leans towards the Societas understanding of politics whereas his recent works on Nietzsche lean towards a universitas conception of politics. He does not seem to think these two are mutually exclusive. One could say his project is trying to reconcile universitas and liberalism for the 21st century. BooksThe Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (Yale, 1990)Hegel's Philosophy of Freedom (Yale, 1999)Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction (Yale, 2004)Adventures of a Free Spirit: Nietzsche's Trilogy from the Middle Period'' (forthcoming, Chicago, 2011) References 1956 births Living people Governmental studies academics American political writers American male non-fiction writers Bowdoin College faculty Alumni of the London School of Economics