Politics

CAREERS:

Those who have graduated from Ave Maria with a politics major have gone on to work in Washington D.C. for members of Congress as well as in a variety of policy organizations that study, advocate, and lobby for specific public policies. Many have gone on to law school while others have pursued graduate studies with the goal of one day teaching in secondary or higher education. There are a number of careers you can pursue with a politics major, including political consulting, working on campaigns, political advocacy, journalism, and public service on the local, state, national, and international level.

Below are links that outline the wealth of career opportunities for Political Science graduates:
https://apsia.org/careers/career-guide/

AFFILIATIONS:

The University is affiliated through Career Services with numerous political organizations in Florida and D.C. (see below). Internship and mentoring programs are available for students interested in a political career.

• U.S. Dept. of State – Washington, D.C. & International
• FL House of Representatives – Tallahassee, FL
• David Rivera, Representative – Tallahassee, FL
• American Life League – Washington, D.C.

With Ave Maria University’s politics major, you’ll advance in your critical understanding of the nature and purpose of political life. According to Aristotle, man is by nature a political animal. The study of politics is therefore a comprehensive study of man. The study of politics is an investigation into the perennial questions of political life through careful analysis of the best that has been said and written by statesmen and philosophers from antiquity through the American founding to the present.

The program is guided by the four subfields of the study of politics: political philosophy, American politics, international relations, and comparative politics. These four fields complement each other and provide broad and principled knowledge of political life.

According to James Madison, education and the study of politics ought to be a support for free government. As Madison says in a letter to William Berry “The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of Knowledge, that their political Institutions…are as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social Rights. What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?”

Once majoring in Politics, you’ll examine the ideas of freedom, democracy and human rights. You’ll touch on ideologies, such as communism and fascism, as well as party politics, electoral behavior, and protest and revolution. You will study the rise and fall of leaders and political parties and the power play between nations. Political philosophy, American politics, international relations, and comparative politics will leverage your understanding of past and current politics.

“I myself am most pleased by good friends, and if I possess something good I teach it, and I introduce them to others for whom, I believe, they will receive some benefit with a view to virtue. And reading in common with my friends, I go through the treasures of the wise men of old which they left behind in their books; and if we see something good, we pick it out; and we hold that it is a great gain if we become beneficial to one another.”

Socrates to Antiphon in Xenophon’s “Memorabilia”