Terence J. Kleven, the Jacob and Gela Schnucker Sessler Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Central College, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program grant to conduct research in Arabic political philosophy at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan, from Sept. 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022.

Kleven will continue his work to complete a critical Arabic edition and an English translation of several treatises of Alfarabi on scientific method. Alfarabi (d. A.D. 950) was a comprehensive thinker, a philosopher, jurist, scientist, mathematician, musician and Muslim theologian, who widely influenced both Eastern and Western thought. He nearly single-handedly revived the classical Greek philosophical rationalism of Plato, Aristotle and Galen.

“The purpose of this research is to enrich our understanding of modern political philosophy through a study of classical Greek and Arabic political philosophy, especially in how it relates science to political thought and to theology today,” Kleven says. “This project entails the recovery of the full range and integration of what today we call the liberal arts in order to foster an intellectual revival of our educational curricula.”

Kleven has received more than two dozen international, national, and regional awards, fellowships and grants. This Fulbright grant is the second Kleven has received. His first Fulbright was tenured at Louis Pouzet Center for Classical and Medieval Studies at the Oriental Library of The University of St. Joseph, Beirut, Lebanon. In 2001, he also was awarded the Iowa Professor of the Year Award from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He has also received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for research in the American Research Center in Cairo.