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Glenn Moots

Professor and Department Chair, Political Science and Philosophy

A headshot of Glenn Moots

Degrees, Certificates and Certifications

  • PhD, Louisiana State University
  • MA, Louisiana State University
  • MS, Walsh College
  • MA, Louisiana State University
  • BA, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)

My Teaching Philosophy

You can’t teach people if they don’t want to learn, so it is essential to give students a reason to learn. Also, I am like a tour guide in a museum. I’m not the painting. I’m not the painter. The author of the primary work (e.g. Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Nozick, Rawls) is the artist. The student has to experience the painting with his or her own eyes. I am there to enable that experience and make it more effective.


Why I am at NU

Northwood students have a clear sense of purpose, and they are able to pursue that purpose without a lot of the politics or ideology that makes other universities less effective. We also appreciate what businesses do. Though we need to be mindful that there is more to life than commerce or finance, for example, we shouldn’t apologize for the good work that businesses do to make life better for everyone, or presume that businesses owe something to everyone.


Selected Publications

  • “Free Exercise and Establishment in Colonial America” in The Cambridge Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
  • Justifying Revolution: Law, Virtue, and Violence in the American War of Independence (co-edited) (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018)
  • Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology (University of Missouri Press, 2010)
  • “Ferris Bueller’s Vacation Vocation” Public Discourse (http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/) Published August 6, 2019
  • “False Choices: Religion’s Role in the American Revolution” (http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/) Published June 19, 2019

Additional Information

Dr. Glenn Moots is the Political Science and Philosophy Department Chair at Northwood University. Dr. Moots earned a Ph.D. and two Master of Arts degrees from Louisiana State University, a Master of Science from Walsh College, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan.  

He has taught for Northwood since 1993.  He and his wife of thirty years have two children who are now married. His daughter graduated from Northwood. At Northwood University he has served as a Bretzlaff Scholar and a Scholar with Northwood University’s McNair Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship.

He is author or editor of two academic press books and author of almost two hundred conference presentations or essays, chapters, and articles published in academic or popular outlets. In 2013-14, he served as a William E Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life at the James Madison Program in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, and he has also been awarded fellowships from the Earhart Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Jack Miller Center, the Acton Institute, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

The campus lecture program he has managed received grants from the Institute for Humane Studies, the Charles Koch Foundation, he Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Jack Miller Center, and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.