Dr. Steven Alan Samson has been a professor of government at Liberty University since 1998. His research and writing focus on the European and American intellectual, cultural, and constitutional traditions, giving particular attention to their ideological challengers. Dr. Samson holds the B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science from the University of Colorado and the Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. Along the way he also obtained teacher certification, worked as a freelance writer/editor, and pursued graduate studies in history and library science. Since 1977, he has taught political science, history, geography, and humanities at a dozen colleges in half a dozen states: Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Florida, Texas, and Virginia. After the Helms School of Government was founded in 2004, Dr. Samson served for three years as the department chairman. A native of Portland, Oregon, Dr. Samson has loved to travel for as long as he can remember. He also enjoys his wide-ranging library of books, periodicals, travel photography, and recordings of symphonic and chamber music. He and his wife Sally, who works as an R.N., own a grass-seed farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and live in an antebellum farmhouse in Virginia. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.
Articles
The Islamic Threat to Eastern Central Asia (with Stephen R. Bowers and Bakhodir Musayev), Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies (2006)
Utilizing the works of Uzbek scholars and journalists, the authors offer an analysis of the...
Liberalism and Foreign Policy, Review of Politics (2004)
Although Tocqueville, Lieber, and Bagehot all espoused the principles of limited government, each spun his...
Edward Rozek: A Teacher’s Gift, About Such Things (1998)
He always spoke with quiet authority, with conviction, about the blight of totalitarian oppression and,...
Francis Lieber on the Sources of Civil Liberty, Humanitas (1996)
Francis Lieber (1798-1872), one of the first university-trained German scholars to migrate to America, served...
The Man Who Skied Down Everest, The BIAS Report (1995)
The skier Miura challenges the inhospitable mountains in a pilgrimage of self-discovery. The ultimate challenge...
Obiter Dicta
Contributions to Books
Francis Lieber: Transatlantic Cultural Missionary, Francis Lieber: The Culture of the Mind (2005)
Lieber remained consistent in his commitment to institutional liberty. He had no notion of a...
Francis Lieber on the Sources of Civil Liberty (Chinese Translation), Humanitas: Rethinking It All (2003)
Popular Press
Assassination and the Death of Politics, The Bells (1995)
The assassination of Israeli's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, moments after speaking of his hopes for...
Unpublished Papers
Transatlantic Exchange: Francis Lieber and His Contemporaries, Introduction to Librarianship, University of South Florida. (1995)
Lieber’s work covers a wide range of fields. In the field of political science, his...
Dorothy Sayers on “The Lost Tools of Learning”, Faculty Publications and Presentations (1993)
The key to education is “learning how to learn.” We must first stand on the...
Stephen Grover Cleveland, Originally written in 1991 for the unpublished Encyclopedia of the American Right (1991)
Easy Credit and Public Confidence (1990)
Here we may see how Mammon has taken the place of God in our national...
Presentations
The Grapes of Parnassos, Liberty University Faculty Chapel (2007)
Western civilization is succumbing to the false fruits of cultural revolutions to which it has...
E Pluribus Unum?, International Forum on Democracy and Reform Through International Development (2006)
The nation-state—as opposed to its rivals—offers an opportunity to reconcile the old dilemma of unity...
Francis Lieber: Émigré Scholar, University Professors for Academic Order (1994)
If Francis Lieber (1798-1872) had been a tinkerer, like Thomas Alva Edison or George Westinghouse,...
Introduction to Political Economy, Juniata College (1991)
Economics is, in the first place, a science of human behavior and motivation. Tom Rose...
Other
Magic Square (1960)
My teachers often found it useful to keep me occupied with extra projects. I had...