Quentin D. Bernhard, of New Tripoli, recently graduated from Muhlenberg College, Allentown, as a member of the Class of 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both history and political science with a minor in Spanish.

He graduated summa cum laude and made the dean’s list for the fall 2019 and spring 2020 semesters.

Bernhard is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the prestigious national honors society for distinguished excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.

Additionally, he received the Dr. Charles S. Bednar Award in political science at the college’s annual honors convocation in early May, recognizing him as “a senior political science major who best exemplifies academic excellence through qualities such as superior scholarship, intellectual curiosity, and public service,” according to his letter of recognition from the Dean of Academic Life.

Dr. Bednar was a former chair of the Muhlenberg College Department of Political Science, and Bernhard was selected for the award given in his honor by current political science faculty at the college.

He was also recognized for completing a senior honors thesis this year.

Bernhard put together an interdisciplinary thesis that integrated history and political science (his two majors), and he worked with and defended his thesis in front of a committee that included faculty from both academic departments.

In early May, he earned highest honors in history and honors in political science for his work.

Bernhard’s thesis examines abolitionism as an ideology best understood on its own terms and for the ways it made radical moral claims rooted in resistance to slavery, related to yet distinct from the liberal, civic republican, and biblical traditions in nineteenth-century American political thought.

It is titled “An Ideology of Their Own Making: Abolitionism and the American Liberal, Civic Republican, and Biblical Traditions.”

Bernhard is a 2016 graduate from Northwestern Lehigh High School.