October 7, 1918 – January 10, 2015

Please join members of the Thomas Aquinas College community in praying for the soul of one of the country’s preeminent scholars, and a friend of the College, Dr. Harry V. Jaffa.

A distinguished fellow at the Claremont Institute, Dr. Jaffa was a professor emeritus of government at Claremont McKenna College and the Claremont Graduate School. He received his B.A. from Yale University, where he majored in English, in 1939, and a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research. Over the course of his distinguished career, he published many important articles and books, including Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Thomism and Aristotelianism, and The Conditions of Freedom.

“Harry Jaffa was one of those who brought genuine political philosophy back to life in the American academy,” says Thomas Aquinas College Vice President for Finance and Administration Peter L. DeLuca. “He really was a scholar and a gentleman — an original thinker in his understanding of the American polity.”

A good friend of the College’s late founding president, Dr. Ronald P. McArthur, Dr. Jaffa lectured at the College at least twice over the years. “He also taught a number of our alumni in the graduate program at Claremont,” Mr. DeLuca recalls, “and they held him in high esteem.”

Funeral services for Dr. Jaffa will be held at 1:30 p.m. this Friday, January 16, at Todd Memorial Chapel, 325 N. Indian Hill, in Claremont. Graveside services will follow at Oak Park Cemetery, 410 Sycamore Ave.