Cheryl Welch received her MA and PhD from Columbia University. She is the author of Liberty and Utility: The French Idéologues and the Transformation of Liberalism and De Tocqueville and editor of Critical Issues in Social Thought with Murray Milgate. She has also written numerous articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, and History of European Ideas. 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, at Harvard Law School, and at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.