Political Science Faculty

Ken Kersch is professor of political science. His primary interests are American political and constitutional development, American political thought, and the politics of courts. Kersch is the recipient of the American Political Science Association's Edward S. Corwin Award (2000), the J. David Greenstone Prize (2006) from APSA's politics and history section, and the Hughes-Gossett Award from the Supreme Court Historical Society (2006).

Professor Kersch has published many articles in academic, intellectual, and popular journals. He is the author of four books: Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2019), The Supreme Court and American Political Development (University Press of Kansas, 2006) (with Ronald Kahn), Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Freedom of Speech: Rights and Liberties Under the Law (ABC-Clio, 2003). He is currently writing American Political Thought: An Invitation (Cambridge, UK: Polity Books), and two additional books on conservative constitutional thought in the postwar U.S.

Professor Kersch is member of the bar of New York, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. He received his B.A. (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) from Williams College, his J.D. (cum laude and Order of the Coif) from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in government from Cornell University.

Kersch has been a visiting professor at Harvard University (2008) and Bowdoin College (2015). Prior to coming to Boston, Kersch was the inaugural Ann and Herbert W. Vaughan Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (2001-2002), faculty associate in the Madison Program and the Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA), and assistant professor of politics (2003-2007) at Princeton University.