Evy Behling

Evelyn Behling is an Instructor, to become Assistant Professor upon conferral of doctorate, in the Institute of American Civics in the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee. She is also currently a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.

She brings ancient perspective to bear on social challenges in liberal democracies, with a particular interest in the American case. Her dissertation, “Aristotle’s Realist Aims: On Faction, Reciprocal Equality, and the Common Advantage in Aristotle’s Politics,” considers the value and challenge of diversity in political life through study of Aristotle’s approach to the problem of faction. She argues that Aristotle seeks to retain a link between political order and  justice while also recognizing the limits of political action that follow from the potential for conflict among the groups needed for a self-sufficient city. Behling’s work on Aristotle and also on John Stuart Mill’s theories of freedom and progress has been selected for presentation at the Harvard Graduate Conference in Political Theory, the Salmon P. Chase Center at Ohio State’s private research workshop, and the American Political Science Association Annual Conference, among other venues.

She has recently been a Bradley Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton University, and a Laub-Novak Fellow of the Jacques Maritain Center, a David Solomon Fellow of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, a Graduate Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, all at the University of Notre Dame, and a GAANN Fellow of the United States Department of Education through the Notre Dame Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government. For her work with undergraduates, she won Notre Dame Political Science’s Spring 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award. Ms. Behling earned her M.A. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame in 2023 and her B.A. with Distinction in Humanities from Yale University in 2017.