Simmons College

Cheryl Welch received her MA and PhD from Columbia University. She came to Simmons in 1991 and was tenured and promoted to full professor in 1995. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of the history of political thought, the philosophy of the social sciences, liberal and democratic theory, constitutional jurisprudence, and human rights. She is the author of Liberty and Utility: The French Idéologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1984), Critical Issues in Social Theory (with M. Milgate, Academic Press, 1989), De Tocqueville (Oxford University Press, 2001), and numerous articles in journals and collective volumes. She is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Professor Welch is currently working on a project that explores the origins of human rights discourse in the nineteenth century and the historical tensions between liberalism and imperialism.

Professor Welch taught at Harvard University for nine years and has also taught at Columbia, Rutgers, and Tufts. She has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard Law School, and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. She is an alumna of Simmons College, where she earned a BA in Government and French and was elected to Academy.

In 2007-2008 she will be on sabbatical leave.