Coleman Named Dean

The University of Minnesota announced that John Coleman has been named dean of the College of Liberal Arts (CLA). The appointment of Coleman is set for July 31, 2014.

“John has a track record as a trustworthy and highly effective academic leader, one whose style is thoughtful and collaborative,” Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Karen Hanson said in a university release. She also called Coleman “a strong and persuasive advocate for the liberal arts.”

Coleman comes to Minnesota from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he has served as the chair of the political science department since 2007, a department he’s been part of for more than 20 years. He was also chair of the College of Letters and Science (L&S) curriculum committee and the L&S representative to the campus’s education innovation initiative, which provides leadership and coordination for the campus’s efforts to integrate new instructional methods, techniques, and nontraditional degree programs into the curriculum. Prior to his time at UW–Madison, Coleman held positions at the University of Texas at Austin and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.

Coleman earned his BA, summa cum laude, in government and history from Clark University and his PhD in political science from MIT. His research on political parties, elections, legislative-executive relations, divided government, campaign finance, and American political development has appeared in the discipline’s leading journals.

CLA is the university's largest college, with more than 15,000 students. “CLA has the potential to lead the nation in building new paradigms for research and education in the liberal arts,” Hanson said in the release. “I look forward to working with John and the University community to advance the excellence and vitality of CLA, to ensure its centrality and impact.”

Berman to Chair CES

The Council for European Studies (CES) announced that Sheri Berman, professor of political science at Barnard College, is the next chair of the CES Executive Committee. Berman is a scholar of twentieth-century European political history and a public voice on contemporary European politics.

Berman has a long history of commitment to the CES, serving most recently on the 2014 Conference Program Committee and the CES’s governing Executive Committee. Berman’s term will commence on July 1, 2015, when she will succeed the current chair, Juan Díez Medrano of the University Carlos III de Madrid.

Four other individuals were elected to the CES Executive Committee: Erik Bleich, Middlebury College; Jan Willem Duyvendak, University of Amsterday; Julia Lynch, University of Pennsylvania; and Deborah Reed-Danahay, University at Buffalo. In addition to these newly elected members, the Executive Committee selected Isabela Mares as liaison to the CES’s host institution, Columbia University. New members’ terms begin March 1, 2014 and end on June 30, 2018.

Brown Announces New Book, Awards

Nadia E. Brown, an APSA Ralph Bunche Summer Institute alum (2003) who received her PhD in 2010 and authored numerous articles focusing on Black women’s politics, has just published Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women and Legislative Decision Making with Oxford University Press (2014).

Also, she was selected to receive the 2013–14 Midwest Women’s Caucus for Political Science Early Career Award and the 2014 faculty scholar award for the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at Purdue University.

Brown joined Purdue University in the fall of 2013 as an assistant professor of political science and African American studies. She came to Purdue from St. Louis University where she specialized in American politics with a distinct focus on Black politics as well as women and politics. Professor Brown received her PhD in political science in 2010 from Rutgers University, with major fields in women and politics and American politics. She also holds a graduate certificate in women’s and gender studies. She earned her BA, also in political science, from Howard University in 2004.

Reflecting on her new publication, Brown said, “Sisters in the Statehouse is a direct byproduct of my involvement in the Ralph Bunche Sumer Institute where I was first able to examine Black women’s politics. Without this program, it is doubtful that I would have entered a graduate program in political science. I am thankful for APSA’s dedication to cultivating a pipeline for minority scholars.”

Cronin and Genovese Receive Award for Leadership Book

At the annual meeting of the International Leadership Association conference in Montreal in October 2013, Thomas E. Cronin and Michael Genovese received the Outstanding Leadership Book Award, for their book Leadership Matters: Unleashing the Power of Paradox (Paradigm Publishers 2012).

The award is sponsored by the University of San Diego Graduate School of Leadership Studies and is dedicated to scholarship on leadership that is both theoretically informed and practically motivated. In keeping with this spirit, Leadership Matters is an interdisciplinary look at a wide range of subjects and approaches. It covers everything from how leadership is portrayed in political and literary classics to leadership in action in business, the military, and Hollywood. The University of San Diego hailed the book for its “exceptional scholarship, innovative thinking, and significant contribution to the field of leadership.” The award committee celebrated Leadership Matters for its “clear examples, cogent arguments, and careful critical analysis,” and predicted its “accessible and provocative” approach will challenge both practitioners and scholars to rethink prevailing theories.

Cronin (above) and Genovese (right) have both served as president of the APSA’s Presidency Research Group and have each written several books on the presidency and public policy. They are also coauthors of The Paradoxes of the American Presidency, 4th edition (Oxford 2013). Cronin is president emeritus at Whitman College and currently McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership at Colorado College. Genovese is director of the Leadership Institute at Loyola Marymount University.

Heine Appointed Wilson Fellow

Jorge Heine, CIGI Chair of Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ontario, has been appointed a Wilson Center Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) in Washington, DC. He thus becomes part of the Center’s global network of thought-leaders. The WWICS is the nation’s official, living memorial to its 28th president, and a gathering place for leading scholars and practitioners from around the world. Heine’s latest book, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (Oxford University Press 2013), coedited with Andrew Cooper and Ramesh Thakur, has elicited considerable interest and had 16 launches in 13 countries and 4 continents in 2013. Jorge is spending his 2013–14 sabbatical year as a United Nations Research Fellow at the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile, working on a project on Indo-Latin Amercan relations.

Barth Receives Blair Award

Jay Barth received the Diane Blair Award from the Southern Political Science Association in January 2014 at the association’s annual meeting in New Orleans, LA. The award is presented biennially to a political scientist who has played an outstanding role in politics and/or government during their career at the local, state, national, or international level.

Blair, a professor at the University of Arkansas from 1968 to 1997, worked as a member of the Electoral College, board chair of the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and a senior advisor, researcher, and chronicler of the successful 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign.

Barth, who joined the Hendrix College faculty 20 years ago, is the M.E. and Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of civic engagement projects at Hendrix. In addition to his teaching, scholarly work, and leadership roles in a variety of nonprofit organizations, Barth is a member of the Arkansas State Board of Education, served on the Arkansas Non-Legislative Commission on the Study of Landlord-Tenant Laws in 2012, and was a member of Governor Mike Beebe’s Task Force on Best Practices for After-School and Summer Programs. He has also been engaged in electoral politics, including an unsuccessful race for the Arkansas State Senate in 2010 and service as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

The award honors the memory of Diane Blair by emphasizing the importance of political scientists applying their professional skills and learning as she did. The recognition is especially meaningful to Barth, who coauthored the second edition of Arkansas Politics and Government: Do the People Rule? (University of Nebraska Press 2005) with Blair.

“This is a particular honor for me because Diane Blair was a coauthor, a friend, and a mentor to me,” Barth said. “In particular, she served as a role model for how political scientists can engage in public service in a manner that maintains the objectivity of a scholar yet brings back to the classroom lessons about politics and policymaking that can only be learned through engagement with that process.”