Updates

Rob Baker, professor of political science at Wittenberg University, has been named the university’s 2018–19 Laatsch Scholar.

Robert Blanton, previously a professor of political science, has been named the chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Political Science and Public Administration.

Vincent Boudreau, political scientist and president of the City College of New York, has been named to City & State’s 2019 Higher Education Power 50 list as one of the most influential people in academia statewide.

David Buhler has retired as commissioner of higher education for Utah and will return to teaching political science as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah.

Thomas E. Cronin has retired from Colorado College’s Department of Political Science and is now McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership Emeritus there, and President Emeritus at Whitman College.

William Downs, political scientist and current dean of the Thomas Harriot College of Arts & Sciences at East Carolina University, has been named Gardner-Webb University’s 13th president.

Joel Fetzer has been promoted to Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University.

Mneesha Gellman has been promoted to associate professor of political science at Emerson College. She will be a Fulbright US Scholar in Oaxaca, Mexico in spring 2020, and was awarded a two year Sociological Initiatives Foundation grant for her work on collaborative methodology with California Tribes.

Lisa Gittner, an associate professor in the Texas Tech Department of Political Science was named one of YWCA Lubbock’s 2019 Women of Excellence.

Eloisa Gordon-Mora has been appointed University Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Hahrie Han, previously the Anton Vonk Professor of Political Science and Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been named inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Marjorie Hershey, professor and associate chair of political science and director of undergraduate studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, will receive the Sylvia E. Bowman Award which honors exemplary faculty members in areas related to American civilization.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, was awarded the R.R. Hawkins Award by the Association of American Publishers in its annual PROSE Awards competition for “Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President.”

Cindy Kam, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, was a co-winner of the university’s 2019 Mentoring Award, an honor recognizing members of the community who foster the professional and intellectual development of Vanderbilt women.

Kimuli Kasara, associate professor of political science at Columbia University, was a recipient of one of the university’s 2019 Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Awards “that honor exceptional instruction and scholarship, with a special emphasis on the mentoring of students in the arts and sciences” and carry a $25,000 stipend for three years.

John Kincaid, Robert B. & Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service at Lafayette College, received the college’s Distinguished Leadership in Community-Based Teaching and Research Award.

David Lazer, previously Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University, was appointed to the rank of University Distinguished Professor, the highest honor Northeastern bestows upon a faculty member.

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Joe Lowndes, professor of political science at the University of Oregon, was surprised during a lecture and awarded the Tykeson Teaching Award and a $2,500 cash prize.

Patrick McGuinn, a professor of political science and education at Drew University, has been named one of the top 200 scholars in the US who help shape public discourse on education in Education Week’s Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, where he has appeared since 2011.

Corina McKendry, associate professor of political science at Colorado College, has been named director of the college’s State of the Rockies Project.

Ronald McMullen, the University of Iowa’s Ambassador in Residence and lecturer in the Department of Political Science, was awarded the university’s International Engagement Teaching Award for 2018–19.

Brent Pickett, a longtime University of Wyoming-Casper and School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies (SPPAIS) faculty member, is the recipient of the 2019 Hollon Family Award for Teaching Excellence in Off-campus Programs for pioneering the use of the web-conference tool Zoom to deliver courses.

Robert D. Putnam, Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy within the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, was named as one of this year’s faculty fellows for the Hagler Institute of Advanced Study at Texas A&M.

Keith C. Rogers Jr., past adjunct professor in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs Political Science program at Virginia Commonwealth University, has been appointed Town Manager of Dumfries, VA.

Bill Scheuerman, a professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington, was recently named James H. Rudy Professor, an award for faculty who are viewed by peers as superior in their fields of study.

Rocío Titiunik, previously the James Orin Murfin Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and research associate professor at Michigan’s Center for Political Studies in the Institute for Social Research, has taken a position of professor of political science at Princeton University.

Steven I. Wilkinson, the Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and a professor of political science and international affairs at Yale University, has been appointed the next Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Philip J. Williams , previously political science professor and director of the Center of Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, was named the new College of Liberal Arts Dean at California Polytechnic State University.

Allison White, assistant professor of political science and assistant director of international studies at Colorado State University, was one of the recipients of the university’s 2019 Best Teacher Awards.

Heather Wright, associate professor of political science at Wittenberg University, was a co-winner of this year’s Wittenberg Woman of the Year award.

Matthew Woessner, associate professor of political science and public policy at Penn State Harrisburg, is the winner of the 2019 McKay Donkin Award for the faculty member who has contributed most to the “economic, physical, mental or social welfare of the faculty” of the university.

Spotlight

Cuéllar Elected to Harvard Corporation

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar has been elected as the newest member of the Harvard Corporation, alongside financial expert Timothy R. Barakett. Both began their roles in July. Cuéllar, a native of Mexico, is a justice of the Supreme Court of California (since 2015) and a longtime leading member of the Stanford faculty. A lawyer and a political scientist, he has directed Stanford’s principal institute for international studies, has served in varied roles in federal government, and has sat on the Harvard Board of Overseers since 2017.

Born in Matamoros, Mexico, the son of educators from Northern Mexico, he moved with his family to Calexico, Calif., just across the border from its sister city, Mexicali, at age 14. After graduating from Harvard College, where he concentrated in government and political psychology, he received an MA in political science from Stanford in 1996 and a JD from Yale Law School in 1997, before serving as senior adviser to the undersecretary for enforcement in the US Treasury Department. He was awarded a PhD in political science from Stanford in 2000, and served in 2000–01 as a law clerk for Chief Judge Mary Schroeder of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In 2001, Cuéllar joined the Stanford law faculty, where he became a full professor in 2007 and the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law in 2012. His scholarship and teaching explore legal and institutional change across a wide range of fields, including administrative law and legislation, cyberlaw, criminal justice, public health law, immigration, and international law and security. As director of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies from 2013 to 2015, he oversaw an array of 12 centers and programs focused on such diverse areas as governance and development, international security, health policy, food security and the environment, and contemporary Asia.

His leadership roles at Stanford have included stints as director of the Stanford Cyber Initiative, co-chair of the Stanford Global Development and Poverty Initiative, codirector of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and chair of the Stanford Law School Appointments Committee.

While on leave from Stanford, Cuéllar co-chaired the Immigration Policy Working Group for the Obama-Biden transition in 2008–09. He then served in the White House as special assistant to the president for justice and regulatory policy in 2009–10, advising on such issues as criminal sentencing, public health and safety, regulatory reform, civil rights, and immigration. After resuming active faculty service, he co-chaired the US Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission and served on the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States. He remains the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford. As a Harvard Overseer, he serves on the standing committees on social sciences and institutional policy, the advisory committee on honorary degrees, and the visiting committees for both the Design School and the Medical School. He taught January-term courses at Harvard Law School in 2016 and 2017.

Cuéllar chairs the board of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; the advisory board of AI Now (an initiative at New York University exploring the impacts of artificial intelligence); and the advisory board of Stanford Seed (focused on alleviating global poverty). He is a trustee of the Hewlett Foundation and a member of the American Law Institute’s governing council. He was Stanford University’s principal commencement speaker in June 2017.

Known formally as the President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Harvard Corporation is the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere. Chartered in 1650, the Corporation exercises fiduciary responsibility with regard to the University’s academic, financial, and physical resources and overall well-being. With 13 members, the Corporation is one of Harvard’s two governing boards. Members of the other, the Board of Overseers, are elected by holders of Harvard degrees.

Adapted from the Harvard University news release.

Dowe Jointly Joins Emory and Oxford

Pearl K. Dowe, noted political scientist and scholar, will join Emory University in fall 2019 as Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science and African American Studies with a joint appointment between the university’s Oxford College and Emory College of Arts and Sciences. Dowe currently chairs the department of political science and is an affiliated faculty member of the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Arkansas.

Dowe’s unique joint appointment will bridge Oxford and Emory colleges. With a home base for teaching and scholarship at Oxford, Dowe will liaise to the Department of African American Studies at Emory College, where she will teach a course each year and help expand the curriculum. At Oxford, her courses will have a thematic focus on understanding leadership.

Dowe’s most recent research focuses on African American women’s political ambition and public leadership. Her published writing includes coauthorship of Remaking the Democratic Party: Lyndon B. Johnson as Native-Son Presidential Candidate (University of Michigan Press, 2016) and editorship of African Americans in Georgia: A Reflection of Politics and Policy Reflection in the New South (Mercer University Press, 2010). She has published numerous articles and book chapters that have appeared in the Journal of African American Studies, Political Psychology, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Journal of Black Studies and Social Science Quarterly.

Dowe has presented widely at professional conferences and given frequent news-media interviews about American political topics. She currently serves as parliamentarian for the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, is a member of several committees for APSA and previously served on the executive council of the Southern Political Science Association. She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy and the Race, Gender & Class Journal.

Adapted from the Emory University news release.

Wang Named Dean of Adelphi University’s College of Arts and Sciences

Vincent Wei-cheng Wang, a professor of politics and dean of Ithaca College’s School of Humanities and Sciences has been named dean of Adelphi University’s College of Arts and Sciences.

At Ithaca, Wang expanded the Summer Scholars program by one-third, inaugurated an innovative “match” program through which faculty mentored students in research, and secured increased travel support for students to attend conferences. Also supportive of faculty research, Dr. Wang successfully augmented faculty professional development travel funding support, streamlined the application process and incentivized external grant seeking and other professional pursuits.

Dr. Wang is a widely published author and presenter with more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and 44 other scholarly publications, as well as more than 170 op-ed articles and letters to the editor published in media outlets including The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the Financial Times. He has held nonprofit and civic leadership positions, including service as president of the International Studies Association-South, president of the American Association for Chinese Studies (AACS), and commissioner of the Overseas Community Affairs Council, Republic of China (Taiwan). He serves on the editorial boards of Asia Policy, published by The National Bureau of Asian Research, and Issues and Studies: An International Quarterly on China, Taiwan, and East Asian Affairs, published by the Institute of International Relations, and is a senior fellow of the Asia Program of Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think tank.

Adapted from the Adelphi University news release.

Herron Awarded Minerva Research Initiative

Erik Herron, the Eberly Family Professor of Political Science and his collaborators, Cynthia Buckley (University of Illinois) and Ralph Clem, have been awarded a Minerva Research Initiative award, totaling $1.1 million, to better predict how hostile powers might interfere with their neighbors.

The Minerva Research Initiative, managed by the US Department of Defense, funds social science research aimed at improving basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world that are of strategic importance to the US.

By studying Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine, Herron is looking for evidence of Russian interference that may have had an effect on how these countries provided civilian services related to health, education and elections. So far, Herron and his colleagues have collected open-source data from Ukrainian and Russian language media as well as international and domestic organizations to find reports of attacks on hospitals. With the help of the Minerva Initiative, Herron and his collaborators will have the opportunity to expand the scope of the investigation to cover more countries and additional aspects of state services to citizens.

Herron notes that one reason that places like Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine are being targeted is because they are moving toward becoming democratic societies. “The Russian political elites have had an interest in maintaining the kleptocratic government that is currently in place in Russia,” Herron said. “Destabilizing western European and US interests internationally and domestically helps maintain the kleptocracy in Russia. Having a viable alternative to the system of government does not advance the means of maintaining the system as it exists. Herron hopes that this research will help the US military better understand potential warning signs of interference by Russia.

Adapted from the West Virginia University news release.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences Announces Members

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Congratulations to the following APSA members elected as members to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2019.

CASBS Announces 2019–20 Fellows

The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University announced its 2019–20 fellows class, comprised of a total of 38 scholars. Since its inception in 1954 the Center has been inviting a select group of social science and other scholars to its hilltop location for yearlong fellowships. Their residencies, spent in individual studies overlooking the Stanford campus and Silicon Valley, are solely devoted to the production of knowledge. During their time at CASBS, fellows have no departmental commitments and no teaching. Proximity to scholars working in other social and behavioral science disciplines occur regularly at lunch and in fellows’ seminars, providing an opportunity for exposure to new methods, perspectives, theories, and problems. The class of 2019–20 fellows features the following current and past APSA members.

Michael Albertus

University of Chicago

S.M. Amadae

University of Helsinki

Wendy K. Tam Cho

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

David Ciepley

University of Denver

Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon

University of Pennsylvania

Guy Grossman

University of Pennsylvania

Mai Hassan

University of Michigan

Michael Hiscox

Harvard University

Lianjiang Li

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Noah Nathan

University of Michigan

Jennifer Pan

Stanford University

Bruno Perreau

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mark R. Warren

University of Massachusetts Boston

Leif Wenar

Kings College

2019 CASBS Summer Institute Participants

In 2016, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) revived its history of hosting summer institutes. Prior CASBS summer institutes had transformative effects on a variety of social science fields, including behavioral economics, contentious politics, and economic sociology. In 2019, the insitute on “Organizations and Their Effectiveness” returns for its fourth consecutive year, from July 8 to July 20. The class of 2019 participants features the following current and past APSA members.

Angie Bautista-Chavez

Harvard University

Shelby Grossman

University of Memphis

Erin McDonnell

University of Notre Dame

Martin J. Williams

University of Oxford

2019 Johan Skytte Prize Awarded to Margaret Levi

Professor Margaret Levi at Stanford University and the University of Washington has been named the 25th recipient of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. She is awarded the prize for “having laid the foundations of our understanding of why citizens accept state coercion, by combining theoretical acumen and historical knowledge.”

Margaret Levi is Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and professor of political science at Stanford University. She is also Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita in International Studies at the University of Washington.

Her work often revisits the sources of legitimacy behind state coercion and coercion exercised by other collectives. According to Levi, the state could not exist without what she calls a quasi-voluntary consent to being governed, paying taxes, and obeying laws which we might not necessarily like or have not actively helped to create. As the experience of many dictatorial rulers shows, the price of governing is often high. In the worst scenarios, people have to be divided by walls, placed under surveillance, bribed with “bread and games”–but even these strategies do not necessarily make the rulers safe. A potential revolt is always brewing. Governing becomes much easier when consent is given, which, as Levi shows, is best achieved if national politics is perceived as fair, if decision making procedures are perceived as inclusive, and if there is a belief that everyone contributes without free-riding.

The prize will officially be awarded on September 28, 2019 at Uppsala University. It includes prize money of SEK $500,000 as well as a golden medal crafted by renowned Swedish goldsmiths.

Adapted from the Skytte Prize website.

Tuck and Mettler Announced as 2019 Guggenheim Fellows

Political scientists Richard Tuck and Suzanne Mettler were awarded fellowships as part of the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship class. Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1925 as a memorial to a son who died April 26, 1922. The Foundation offers fellowships to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed. The Foundation receives approximately 3,000 applications each year and approximately 175 fellowships are awarded.

Richard Tuck is the Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government at Harvard University. Before moving to Harvard in 1995, Tuck taught in the History Faculty at Cambridge since 1970, and he is still an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College there. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of a number of books on political theory and its history, including Natural Rights Theories (1979), Hobbes (1989), Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (1993), The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (1999), Free Riding (2008) and The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy (2016).

Tuck’s current project is an attempt to determine how the idea of individual agency in politics can once again be given the importance it possessed for the first great theorists of modern democracy such as Rousseau and Bentham (i.e., to give a proper weight to voting in democratic theory).

Suzanne Mettler is the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions in the Government Department at Cornell University. Mettler is the author of five books, most recently The Government-Citizen Disconnect (Russell Sage, 2018); Degrees of Inequality: How The Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream (Basic Books, 2014); and The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Programs Undermine American Democracy (University of Chicago, 2011). Her earlier books, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism In New Deal Public Policy (Cornell University Press, 1998) and Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford University Press, 2005) were each awarded the Kammerer Award of APSA for the best book on US national policy. In addition, Dividing Citizens won the Derthick Award for a book that has made an enduring contribution to the study of federalism, and Soldiers to Citizens earned the Greenstone prize of the APSA’s Politics and History section. Mettler is also the coeditor of two books and has published many book chapters and articles in scholarly journals including the American Political Science Review and Perspectives on Politics. She has written shorter pieces for a broad audience for publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington Monthly, and Foreign Affairs. With Larry Jacobs, she is conducting an ongoing panel study of public opinion on the Affordable Care Act, begun in 2010.

Mettler’s current research examines crises of democracy throughout American history and what can be learned from them to illuminate the state of democracy today, the factors that endanger it, and how it can be revitalized. Her broader scholarly interests include public policy, American political development, political behavior and civic engagement, and inequality.

Adapted from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website.

2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellows Announced

The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program provides support for high-caliber scholarship in the social sciences and humanities. The anticipated result of each fellowship is the publication of a book or major study that offers a fresh perspective on a pressing challenge of our time. Winning proposals will explore a wide range of topics, including the state of America’s democratic institutions and processes, the cross-section of technology and humanistic endeavor, global connections and global ruptures, and threats to both human and natural environments. The 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellows that are members of APSA are listed below.

William J. Connell

Project Title: Tracking Migrant Labor in Renaissance Florence

William J. Connell, a professor of history and holder of the Joseph and Geraldine La Motta Chair in Italian Studies at Seton Hall University, is an expert in the history of both Renaissance Europe and Italian immigration. His research has encompassed topics as varied as Machiavelli and Italians in the United States in the 19th century. Connell is the editor of several books, and his work has been featured on many major media outlets, including NPR and The Times Literary Supplement.

Thomas M. Keck

Project Title: Free Expression and Judicial Power

Thomas M. Keck is the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics and professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Much of his work has concerned the Supreme Court and other federal courts. His most recent book, Judicial Politics in Polarized Times, examines the response of contemporary US judges to litigation on four polarizing issues: abortion, affirmative action, gay rights, and gun rights.

Young Mie Kim

Project Title: Follow the Ad: Understanding Election Interference on Digital Platforms

Young Mie Kim is a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She studies the role data-driven digital platforms play in political communication. Kim led the 2018 “The Stealth Media” study which collected five million paid Facebook ads and used them to track the sources and targets of anonymous campaigns in the months leading up to the 2016 US elections. Her work has appeared in nearly 400 national and international media outlets, including The New York Times, BBC, and WIRED. She has also presented her research before Congress and the European Parliament.

Benjamin Lessing

Project Title: Inside Out: How Prison Gangs Organize Crime (And Threaten the State) From behind Bars

Benjamin Lessing is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago who studies organized violent groups that do not seek formal state power. His first book, Making Peace In Drug Wars, examined armed conflict between drug cartels and governments in Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. Lessing founded the Criminal Governance in the Americas project, which measures the extent of gang rule over civilians in Latin America.

Sally A. Nuamah

Project Title: How the Punishment of Black Women and Girls Affects Our Democracy

Sally A. Nuamah is an assistant professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Nuamah examines the political consequences of public policies in the United States, Ghana, and South Africa, producing research that sits at the intersection of race, gender, education policy, and political behavior. Her new book, How Girls Achieve, looks across race and gender to illuminate the unequal costs—school closure, sexual harassment, punishment—facing poor black girls striving to succeed, investigating what schools can do to overcome those obstacles.

Sharece Thrower

Project Title: Judicial Constraints on Executive and Presidential Power

Sharece Thrower is an assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University focusing on American politics, with an emphasis on political institutions and their powers. Thrower examines how Congress and the courts influence tools of executive power, such as executive orders, to determine how and to what extent the executive branch is constrained by the separation of powers system.

Adapted from the Carnegie Corporation of New York website.