"Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. [1932–], William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government, studies and teaches political philosophy. He has written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government, in defense of a defensible liberalism and in favor of a Constitutional American political science. He has also written on the discovery and development of the theory of executive power, and as a translator of Machiavelli and of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. His current research is a book on manliness. He was Chairman of the Government Department from 1973-1977, has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. He has hardly left Harvard since his first arrival in 1949, and has been on the faculty since 1962." (Harvard University, Department of Government faculty biography)

"Harvey Mansfield...is one of the most prominent and controversial academics in America today. Many people know him primarily as the outspoken critic of grade inflation, political correctness, and identity politics in the academy. But Mansfield is first and foremost a meticulous scholar and a leading expert on the political philosophy of Machiavelli. He also enjoys translating great books in political philosophy. His translations of Machiavelli's The Prince (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1985, 1998) and Discourses on Livy (Chicago, 1996) are major contributions to the field. More recently, Mansfield and his wife, Delba Winthrop, have turned their attention to the great classic of American political thought, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (Chicago, 2000)...." (from preview of "The Best Book Ever Written on America, Tocqueville's perennial timeliness," [Mansfield] interview with Donald A. Yerxa in online version of Books & Culture: A Christian Review on ChristianityToday.com, Feb. 2001.)

His publications include Statesmanship and Party Government (1965), The Spirit of Liberalism (1978), Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders (1979), Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (1989), Machiavelli's Virtue (1996), and A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy (2001).