The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a new hire Thursday, Dr. Chad Pecknold, a prominent Catholic theologian and one of the leading figures in the post-liberal movement.
The National Catholic Register initially broke the story, relaying that Pecknold was “excited” to accept the position and recognized “[the] honor to serve my country in this capacity.” In his new position, he will be responsible for public outreach for the Office of Public Engagement in the DHS.
Pecknold received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and since 2008 has been a professor at Catholic University of America. On his LinkedIn page, Pecknold is listed as “on leave for public service” which coincides with his new position.
In 2022, he participated in a New Polity conference titled “Is America a Tyranny” and engaged in a lively discussion in which he exposed — among other things — a superficially attractive but ill-conceived localism.
Gladden Pappin, another Catholic intellectual and post-liberal thinker, congratulated Pecknold on X, saying, “Chad Pecknold is an outstanding pick to support President Trump’s agenda through public outreach at the Department of Homeland Security.”
In addition to possessing political insight, having previously noted that that “all civilizational conflict is ultimately theological,” Pecknold’s immigration pedigree is equally impressive.
In a recent essay for American Mind, he approvingly noted many Americans “have finally woke up to the fact that citizenship must be more than a piece of paper,” after which he challenged the legitimacy of birthright citizenship, seeing it as an existential threat and asking whether “our laws permit Americans to have a country or not.”
In the same essay, Pecknold distinguished between natural and civil rights, classifying citizenship in the latter category, not the former as many— even some Catholics — mistakenly think.
In February, Pecknold endorsed a paper from Hungarian think-tank Axioma Center that defended the legitimacy, in principle, of mass deportations, arguing they “may be a legitimate response to mass migration.”
The Dispatch
Catholic response on social media
There’s an old saying that goes “judge a man by his enemies.” There is certainly no reason why this cannot apply to Professor Pecknold and those opposed to his new role in the Trump administration.
Mike Lewis is a progressive and neo-modernist who edits the Where Peter Is blog. On X, he dedicated a long thread to decrying the appointment, falsely characterizing Pecknold’s views on immigration as “abhorrent and anti-Catholic.”
Other detractors began dredging up old quotes from Pecknold, ostensibly in the attempt to make him look bad. However, the exact opposite is the case — that is, unless the audience is committed to classical liberalism and its anti-Catholic spirit.
Radical activist Jason Hart lamented on X that Pecknold rejects the separation of Church and State as an ideal (as any Catholic must) while tagging Vice President JD Vance and the official Department of Homeland Security account to expose the “threat” he supposedly poses.
In typical handwringing fashion, Hart then posted a sensible comment from the good professor outlining a Christian program to restore order in American cities, as if it was a bad thing.
“To recover a vision, a Christian charitable vision of order in the city, where conservatives run cities again, maybe they need 10 years of the federal government coming in and bringing some troops assistance to help aid that process,” Pecknold astutely observed at an Intercollegiate Studies Institute conference last autumn.
All this goes to show that not only can you judge a man by his friends (Prov. 13:20) but the same can be said of a man’s enemies. Professor Pecknold ought to continue to hold his head high, witnessing to Catholic social teaching, and aiding the Trump administration in its immigration and deportation initiatives.
