David A. Hopkins has co-authored a new book, Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics.

 Over the past several decades, American society has experienced fundamental changes – from shifting relations between social groups and evolving language and behavior norms to the increasing value of a college degree. These transformations have polarized the nation’s political climate and ignited a perpetual culture war.

In Polarized by Degrees, a sequel to their award-winning collaboration Asymmetric Politics, Hopkins and co-author Matt Grossmann draw on an extensive variety of evidence to explore how these changes have affected both major parties. They show that the Democrats have become the home of highly educated citizens with progressive social views who prefer credentialed experts to make policy decisions, while Republicans have become the populist champions of white voters without college degrees who increasingly distrust teachers, scientists, journalists, universities, nonprofit organizations, and even corporations. The result of this new “diploma divide” between the parties is an increasingly complex world in which everything is about politics – and politics is about everything.

Phi Beta Kappa Teacher of the Year: David DiPasquale's research and teaching focus on the relationship between Islam and the West

Associate Professor of the Practice David DiPasquale, a member of the Political Science Department whose research and teaching focus on the relationship between Islam and the West, is the winner of the 2024 Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, presented by Boston College students in the prestigious honor society.

Each year, Phi Beta Kappa students submit nominations for outstanding teachers who have positively influenced their experiences at BC, either inside or outside the classroom. Faculty are selected for the award based on the cumulative nominations from students over multiple years.

DiPasquale, who earned a master’s degree in political science from BC in 1992 and has taught in the department since 2009, is associate director and director of graduate studies for the Islamic Civilization and Societies Program. He also directs the Political Science Department’s John Marshall Project—named for the 19th-century United States Supreme Court chief justice who advocated for civic education of the young—which promotes a focused study of “the citizenship and statesmanship needed by a democratic and constitutional republic” through a variety of activities and resources, including the Undergraduate Marshall Fellows Program.  

Being selected for the teaching award is “easily the highest honor I have ever received” since joining the department, said DiPasquale, and filled him with “heartfelt and sincere gratitude” toward the Phi Beta Kappa students who had nominated him.

Gerald Easter's new book The Last Stand of the Raven Clan: A Story of Imperial Ambition, Native Resistance and How the Tlingit-Russian War Shaped a Continent

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Russia was a rising power in North America, aiming to corner the lucrative North Pacific fur trade and colonize the American coastline all the way to San Francisco Bay. This ambitious project was moving apace until the Russians were finally confronted and stalled on the battlefield. When Russia went to war in America, the fate of a continent was at stake. Yet it was neither the Old-World rivals Spain and Britain nor the upstart United States who stopped Russian expansion, but a coalition of defiant Tlingit bands. The Last Stand of the Raven Clan is a history of how the indigenous Tlingit people of southeast Alaska thwarted Imperial Russia’s plans of conquest in North America. 

Professors Dennis Hale and Marc Landy have written a new book, Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism.

“The Constitution Is Broken And Should Not Be Reclaimed.” This headline from a New York Times editorial written by Harvard and Yale law professors, is a more hyperbolic expression of a view increasingly prominent in the writings of law professors, journalists, political scientists, and politicians who deem the Constitution to be “broken,”“paralyzing,” “undemocratic,” and “obsolete.”

Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism provides a defense of American Constitutionalism in the face of those criticisms. Such critics often forget what the Constitution attempts to achieve: a republican form of government in a nation as large as an empire. Complicating matters is that America was the first modern state— the first to be shaped by the expectation that government exists to protect natural rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and that it had to cope with inherent difficulties modernity poses for republican government – a huge population that is also culturally, religiously, and ethnically diverse, as well as incurably commercially minded.The framers recognized that to sustain republican government in such circumstances required both an embrace of modernity and a determination to tame modernity’s most anti-republican excesses.

The book argues that this framework for building and constraining a modern state remains the best one for coping with the problems modernity still poses. To more fully appreciate the persistence and endurance of anti-constitutional thinking, the book traces its lineage, starting with the Anti-Federalists and including certain abolitionists; Henry David Thoreau; 19 th -century utopians such as Edward Bellamy, Herbert Croly, and Woodrow Wilson; prominent New Deal, Great Society, and New Left anti-constitutionalists, as well as modernpolitical scientists such as Robert Dahl.

The penultimate chapter asks the inconvenient question: Why, if the constitutional order is so praise worthy, has confidence in it declined so dramatically? To address this question the book revisits the most critical periods of 20th Century policy transformation—the New Deal and the Great Society as well as the period since the 70s, which has engendered a form of anti-constitutional relations between the courts, the bureaucracy and Congress, which the book labels “stealth government.” It then offers an alternative way of understanding the path to useful political reform: working with the “constitutional grain” rather than against it. The book concludes with a reflection on the art of “thinking constitutionally.”

An introduction to the art of rhetoric or persuasive speaking, Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice: A Reader, is the newly published book from Professors Robert Bartlett and Nasser Behnegar.

 A collection of primary sources, it combines classic statements of the theory of political rhetoric (Aristotle, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Cicero) with a rich array of political speeches, from Socrates to Martin Luther King Jr., Pericles to Richard Nixon, Sojourner Truth to Phyllis Schlafly. These speeches exemplify not only the three principal kinds of rhetoric – judicial, deliberative, and epideictic – but also the principal rhetorical proofs.

Grouped thematically, the speeches boast a diversity of speakers, subject matters, and themes. At a time when the practice of democracy and democratic deliberation are much in question, this book seeks to encourage the serious study of rhetoric by making available important examples of it, in both its noblest and its most scurrilous forms.

Winner of the 2023 UACES Best Book Prize, Mary Murphy's: A Troubled Consititutional Future, Northern Ireland after Brexit

The UK's decision to leave the EU has opened up huge existential questions for Northern Ireland as it marks its centenary. Constitutional conflict in Northern Ireland had been regarded as largely resolved and settled, but Brexit has altered the wider constitutional framework within which the 1998 Good Friday Agreement is situated. With the question of Irish unity gaining renewed and sustained traction, and with trade, relationships and politics across "these islands" in a state of flux, Northern Ireland approaches a constitutional moment.

Murphy and Evershed examine the factors, actors and dynamics that are most likely to be influential, and potentially transformative, in determining Northern Ireland's constitutional future. This book offers an assessment of how Brexit and its fallout may lead to constitutional upheaval, and a cautionary warning about the need to prepare for it.

The 2024 winner of the Donald S. Carlisle Award for outstanding graduating senior in the political science department is Paul Keenan.

Paul’s record of excellence as a member of the department honors program included his uniquely ambitious and highly impressive honors thesis, "Upon A Darkling Plane: A 2D Spatial Model of American Politics, 1972-2022.” 

Shep Melnick's New Book, The Crucible of Desegregation: The Uncertain Search for Educational Equality, examines the patchwork evolution of school desegretation.

In 1954, the Supreme Court delivered the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education—establishing the right to attend a desegregated school as a national constitutional right—but the decision contained fundamental ambiguities. The Supreme Court has never offered a clear definition of what desegregation means or laid out a framework for evaluating competing interpretations.

In The Crucible of Desegregation, R. Shep Melnick examines the evolution of federal school desegregation policy from 1954 through the termination of desegregation orders in the first decades of the twenty-first century, combining legal analysis with a focus on institutional relations, particularly the interactions between federal judges and administrators.

Melnick argues that years of ambiguous, inconsistent, and meandering Court decisions left lower court judges adrift, forced to apply contradictory Supreme Court precedents in a wide variety of highly charged political and educational contexts. As a result, desegregation policy has been a patchwork, with lower court judges playing a crucial role and with little opportunity to analyze what worked and what didn’t. The Crucible of Desegregation reveals persistent patterns and disagreements that continue to roil education policy.

Henry Middlebrook is awarded the 2023 Donald S. Carlisle Award

The Carlisle Award was established in memory of Prof. Donald Carlisle, who was a professor in the political science department for nearly 30 years, from 1968-1997.  

Every year, the political science department awards the Carlisle prize to the top graduatingsenior in the Honors Program. Middlebrook (majoring in and writing theses for both Political Science and Philosophy) had an outstanding overall academic record, and the Honors Program recognized his political science thesis, American Democracy Under the Attention Economy: What John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, and Edward Bernays Reveal About America’s Contemporary Democratic Conditions, as the outstanding thesis submitted this year.

An argument for the classical realist approach to world politics

Professor Jonathan Kirshner's most recent book, An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics, identifies the fundamental flaws of classical realism’s would-be successors, and shows how this older, more nuanced, and sophisticated method for studying world politics better explains the formative events of the past.

Kirshner also reveals how this approach is ideally equipped to comprehend the vital questions of the present—such as the implications of China’s rise, the ways that social and economic change alter the balance of power and the nature of international conflict, and the consequences of the end of the US-led postwar order for the future of world politics.

Professor Susan M. Shell's new book, The Politics of Beauty, examines the entirety of Kant's Critique of Taste.

This Element examines the entirety of Kant's Critique of Taste (in Part One of the Critique of Judgment) with particular emphasis on its political and moral aims.

Kant's critical treatment of aesthetic judgment is both an extended theoretical response to influential predecessors and contemporaries, including Rousseau and Herder, and a practical intervention in its own right meant to nudge history forward at a time of civilizational crisis. Attention to these themes helps resolve a number of puzzles, both textual and philosophic, including the normative force and meaning of judgments of taste, and the relation between natural and artful beauty.

How Policies Make Interest Groups. A critical, revelatory examination of teachers unions’ rise and influence in American politics.

Assistant Professor Michael Hartney's book publication details how state and local governments adopted a new system of labor relations that subsidized—and in turn, strengthened—the power of teachers unions as interest groups in American politics.

In doing so, governments created a force in American politics: an entrenched, subsidized machine for membership recruitment, political fundraising, and electoral mobilization efforts that have informed elections and policymaking ever since. How Policies Make Interest Groups is trenchant, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why some voices in American politics mean more than others. 

Assistant Professor Lauren Honig's book publication, Land Politics, examines the struggle to control land in Africa through the lens of land titling in Zambia and Senegal.

Contrary to standard wisdom portraying titling as an inevitable product of economic development, Lauren Honig traces its distinctly political logic and shows how informality is maintained by local actors.

The book's analysis focuses on chiefs, customary institutions, and citizens, revealing that the strength of these institutions and an individual's position within them impact the expansion of state authority over land rights. Honig explores common subnational patterns within the two very different countries to highlight the important effects of local institutions, not the state's capacity or priorities alone, on state building outcomes. Drawing on evidence from national land titling records, qualitative case studies, interviews, and surveys, this book contributes new insights into the persistence of institutional legacies and the political determinants of property rights.

The war in Ukraine. The rise of China. The weakening of democratic norms.

The West’s commitment to democratic norms seems more fragile than at any time in memory.

And Russia, long recognized as one of the world’s superpowers, is suddenly looking more like a paper tiger. What does all of this mean for the future of the world order?  Boston College experts present their thoughts on the future of everything from the United States and China to Russia, NATO, and nuclear nonproliferation.

Robert Cerise is awarded the 2022 Donald S. Carlisle Award

The Carlisle Award was established by the Political Science Department in memory of Prof. Carlisle, who was a professor in the department for nearly 30 years, from 1968-1997.  

Every year, the department gives the award to the top graduating senior in the Honors Program.  Cerise (majoring in Political Science and Russian) had an outstanding academic record, and the Honors Program Committee recognized his thesis, “Kazakhstan’s Handbook: A Steppe-by-Steppe Guide to Regime Insulation,” as the outstanding thesis submitted this year.

2022 Political Science Sophomore and Dean's Scholars

Congratulations to our Sophomore and Dean's Scholars!  The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences selected academically distinguished members of the Sophomore Class, who are ranked in the top three percent of their class, to receive this award. 

Congratulations to the following students on being named 2022 Sophomore Scholars and being honored as the most academically distinguished members of the sophomore class: Benjamin Austen, Jack Borrow, Isaiah Brown, Maura Drummey, Alyssa Eamranond, Luisa Esquivel, Christopher Ficeto, Caitlyn Hancock, Emily Howell, Paul Keenan, Patrick Kelly, Srina Lacet, Gabriela Levitt, Marguerite Matheson, Christopher Roder, Ahura Shadfar, Elizabeth Sullivan, and Darya Treanor.  This award recognizes their current distinction and promise for the future.

Congratulations to Regan Dankovich, Annie Donohue, Tyler Gollin, Mackenzie Harrigan, Eleanor Kominiarek, Matthew Malec, Madeleine McGrath, Aidan O'Neill, Samantha Robinson, Devianna Smith, Lauren Wittenmyer, and Lila Zarrella on being named 2022 Dean’s Scholars. The Dean of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences selects the brightest scholars from the Junior Class to be chosen for this honor.  Students are selected on the basis of their overall academic performance, recommendations from their departmental faculty, co-curricular initiatives, and their sense of purpose in how they approach their future.  

Congratulations to Robert Cerise '22, recipient of the 2022 Finneran Commencement Award

The Finneran Commencement Award is the highest award in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences.

It is the gift of Misses Elizabeth and Theresa Finneran and given to the student who has achieved outstanding success in studies while also devoting time and talents to other activities for the enrichment of the College and student life. 

Sean McGraw's new book provides a comprehensive study of educational policy reform as growing calls for further reducing the role of the Catholic Church in Irish primary schools gains traction in a rapidly evolving Irish society.

Drawing upon lessons from the same-sex marriage and abortion reform campaigns, this study provides several policy case studies that demonstrate how the interplay of civil society activists and organisations, the media, public opinion, and political parties and elites determines how policy reforms live or die. 

 The Politics of Irish Primary Education contains a rich and novel set of data, including interviews with leaders and elites from the major actors and institutions, numbers and trends from previously unreleased data from the Church and Department of Education, evidence from the authors’ originally designed and implemented parliamentary surveys, an original analysis of media coverage of educational issues and actors involved in the main educational reform debates, and detailed case studies of divestment, admissions, and curriculum policy reforms. 

A transcript of Leo Strauss’s key seminars on Plato’s Protagoras.

This book offers a transcript of Strauss’s seminar on Plato’s Protagoras taught at the University of Chicago in the spring quarter of 1965, edited and introduced by renowned scholar Robert C. Bartlett.

Strauss examines Protagoras and the sophists, providing a detailed discussion of Protagoras as it relates to Plato’s other dialogues and the work of modern thinkers. This book should be of special interest to students both of Plato and of Strauss.

The False Promise of Arming Insurgents. America’s Spotty Record Warrants Caution in Ukraine

Assistant Prof. Lindsey O'Rourke publishes article in Foreign Affairs. 

Professor Jonathan Kirshner offers penetrating insight into the emerging global political economy at this moment of an increasingly chaotic world.

Kirshner and the contributors to The Downfall of the American Order? cast their eyes back on the order that once was, and look ahead to what might follow.

In dialogue with each other's assessments and expectations, they differ in their assessments of the probable, ranging from a hollowed out American primacy muddling through by default, partial modifications of old institutions and practices at home and abroad, or wholesale contestations and the search for new orders.

Peter Krause’s co-edited volume Stories from the Field named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2021

Associate Professor Peter Krause’s co-edited volume Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science was named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2021 by Choice.

Assistant Prof. Michael Hartney and PhD student Renu Mukherjee publish analysis on the political consequences of school closures in City Journal.

Mukherjee and Hartney found that the GOP gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Youngkin, outperformed Donald Trump more reliably in Virginia counties where public schools had failed to provide at least one month of in-person learning last school year. Their findings speak to how politicians will need to navigate parental frustrations that arise from school closures heading into the 2022 midterm elections.

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Sam Hayes and Assistant Prof. Michael Hartney's research published in the American Political Science Review found that Americans tend to be far more consumed with national politics than with local politics.

The study found that local governments formed in "off-cycle" years (like 2021) are less responsive to the majority's preferences and more responsive instead to organized interest groups, particularly when the interest groups' desires oppose those of the masses.

This may occur, for example, where developers want more higher-density housing, more commercial development and fewer green spaces than citizens or in conservative locations, where public employees generally desire more spending on salaries than residents. The study was also co-authored by Adam M. Dynes of Brigham Young University.

The Political Science Department announces that the winner of the 2021 Donald S. Carlisle Award is Mr. Czar Sepe '21.

The Carlisle Award was established by the Political Science Department in memory of Prof. Carlisle, who was a professor in the department for nearly 30 years, from 1968-1997.  

Every year, the department gives the award to the top graduating senior in the Honors Program.  Czar (majoring in Political Science and History) had an outstanding academic record, and the Honors Program Committee recognized his thesis, “From Beirut to Belfast: How Power-Sharing Arrangements Affect Ethnic Tensions in Post-Conflict Societies,” as the outstanding thesis submitted this year.

Timothy W. Crawford's new book artfully analyzes the past and future performance of wedge strategy in great power politics.

Associate Professor Timothy Crawford's The Power to Divide: Wedge Strategies in Great Power Competition, examines the use of wedge strategies, a form of divisive statecraft designed to isolate adversaries from allies and potential supporters to gain key advantages. 

For policymakers today facing threats to power from great power competitors, Crawford argues that a deeper historical and theoretical grasp of the role of these wedge strategies in alliance politics and grand strategy is necessary. Crawford drives home the contemporary relevance of the analysis with a survey of China's potential to use such strategies to divide India from the US, and the United States' potential to use them to forestall a China-Russia alliance, and closes with a review of key theoretical insights for policy.

Congratulations to Political Science majors, Urwa Hameed '22 and Patrick Kelly '24, recipients of a 2021 Advanced Study Grant.

Advanced Study Grants are awarded for summer research or projects that promise to accelerate dramatically the applicant's academic progress.

The intent of this program is to encourage undergraduates to acquire skills that will make more sophisticated research and study possible during their junior and senior years. Proposed projects must be independent, student-designed projects. 

Political Science majors, Isaiah Brown '24 and Sofia Marino '21, receive a 2021 Critical Language Scholarship

The CLS Program is an intensive overseas language and cultural immersion program for American students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities. 

Congratulations to Isaiah Brown '24 and Sofia Marino '21, recipients of the 2021 Critical Language Scholarship.  Isaiah will study Russian and Sofia will participate in an Arabic program.  Students spend eight to ten weeks abroad studying one of 15 critical languages. The program includes intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences designed to promote rapid language gains. Most languages offered by the CLS Program (9 of 15) do not require applicants to have any experience studying critical languages.

CLS, a program of the U.S. Department of State, is part of a wider government initiative to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering foreign languages that are critical to national security and economic prosperity. CLS plays an important role in preparing students for the 21st century's globalized workforce and increasing national competitiveness.

The CLS Program offers instruction in the following languages: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu.

The Boston College Multidisciplinary Faculty Research Seminar on Climate Change receives a Schiller Institute Grant.

A broad-based group of over two dozen BC faculty representing each professional school and several Arts and Sciences departments proposes establishing a multi-year faculty research seminar highlighting climate change, and cognate energy and environmental issues. 

We seek funding for only the first, or pilot year, which includes monthly research presentations by eight to ten BC faculty.  The regular research presentations will be followed by intensive discussion in a luncheon seminar format.  Each presentation will be proceeded by the distribution of the presenters’ working paper or draft material to be reviewed in advance by the faculty participants.  Selected senior PhD students at the research stage will be invited to participate in the seminar in year one.  In subsequent years we plan to integrate research presentations by outside speakers and selected graduate students.

This project is unique in that it is multi-year--we have very specific plans to continue the project into future years, as long as funding can be generated, and it is multistage—we intend to build out to include outside speakers in year two, to include selected graduate student presenters in year two, to develop multiple sources of external support beginning as soon as possible, and to extend the project into a program that also engages very substantial collaborative research, curriculum exchange and development activities, and community outreach initiatives.  The curriculum and outreach elements are not explained in any detail in this proposal because the funding request involves only the faculty research seminar for the first year.

Ken Kersch is interviewed about the core argument of his award-winning book

Ken Kersch gives a brief interview with the Russell Kirk Center in which he describes the core argument of his award-winning book Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism

Faculty Publication Highlight: Rebel Power by Peter Krause

Many of the world's states—from Algeria to Ireland to the United States—are the result of robust national movements that achieved independence.

Many other national movements have failed in their attempts to achieve statehood, including the Basques, the Kurds, and the Palestinians. In Rebel Power, Peter Krause offers a powerful new theory to explain this variation focusing on the internal balance of power among nationalist groups, who cooperate with each other to establish a new state while simultaneously competing to lead it.

BC Libraries Faculty Publication Highlight

Russian Presidential Election

Ksenia Sobchak, known to many as the "Paris Hilton of Russia," is a candidate in the country's presidential elections next month, when she officially hopes to unseat Vladimir Putin. Associate Professor of the Practice of Political Science Paul Christensen comments to the Huffington Post.

Best Book in Foreign Policy Award

Dangerous Trade: Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation by Associate Professor of Political Science Jennifer Erickson has won the American Political Science Association's first best book award in the area of foreign policy.

BC News

Hopkins Writes Op-Ed in New York Times

Associate Professor of Political Science David Hopkins explains why there is no 'Liberal Tea Party' in The New York Times.

Conference: Kant and the Possibility of Progress

Immanuel Kant’s defense of core Enlightenment ideals, such as individual autonomy, rational religion, and cosmopolitanism, are interwoven with visions of historical progress. This conference will attempt to clarify the nature and significance of Kant’s accounts of political, religious, moral and theoretical progress and the reactions to Kant’s philosophic legacy in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the work of J.G. Herder, J.G Fichte, G.W.F. Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.

More information on this conference is available here.

Krause Publishes Book on Coercion in International Politics

Assistant Professor Peter Krause just published a co-edited volume Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics with Oxford University Press. Chapters from Krause and 15 other scholars focus on coercive tools (terrorism, sanctions, drones, cyber warfare, intelligence, and forced migration), actors (insurgents, social movements, and NGOs) and mechanisms (triadic coercion, foreign-imposed regime change) that drive conflicts across the globe today.

Performance pay and teacher recruitment

Assistant Professor Michael Hartney’s recent Public Administration Review article, “Show Who the Money? Teacher Sorting Patterns and Performance Pay across U.S. School Districts,” was featured in the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy Chalkboard Weblog. Chalkboard highlights the work of scholars whose research brings evidence to bear on the pressing policy questions facing all levels and facets of American education.

Medal of Heroism

Boston College junior and political science major, Mark Kindschuh, who risked his life to save that of a stranger in desperate need of medical attention following the London terror attacks in June, has received the highest honor awarded exclusively to Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps cadets: the Medal of Heroism.

The award was presented to Kindschuh during the BC-North Carolina football game on Veterans Day, by Maj. Gen. Chris Hughes, commander of U.S. Army Cadet Command and Fort Knox.

Read more on BC News

Kelly delivers keynote address at Republicanism Conference in Prague

Professor Christopher Kelly delivered one of the keynote addresses at the conference, "Republicanism in the History of Political Philosophy and Today," which as the 3rd Biennial Ideas in Politics Conference organized by the Institute of Political Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, November 3-4, 2017. The conference was organized by the Institute of Political Studies, the Centre for Political Philosophy, Ethics, and Religion, Anglo-American University, and the Political Science Society.

Krause talks NYC terrorist attack on WGBH

Assistant Professor Peter Krause discussed the causes and response to the NYC terrorist attack on WGBH's "Greater Boston."

In North Africa, Fears of Iran's Shadow

The defeat of IS in Raqqa has bought time for North African governments to consolidate their religious communities, but also removes an obstacle to Iranian influence. Don't expect the competition for leadership from the Persian Gulf to be resolved anytime soon, writes Professor of Political Science Jonathan Laurence in a commentary for Reuters.

Erickson wins award from the American Political Science Association

ISAC fellow Jennifer L. Erickson won an award from the American Political Science Association for her book, Dangerous Trade: Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation (Columbia University Press, 2015). The work was selected as the winner of the APSA Foreign Policy Section’s 2017 Best Book Award. This award is offered biennially and reflects a very competitive evaluation of nominated scholarly monographs published in 2015 and 2016.

Krause Interviewed by ABC-Australia on Fatah-Hamas Relations

Assistant Professor Peter Krause provided his insight on a possible Fatah-Hamas unity agreement for the Palestinians after months of sanctions on Gaza and regional tensions in an interview with ABC Australia.

From BC Bookmarks: R. Shep Melnick

O'Neill Professor of American Politics R. Shep Melnick is among the legal scholars, philosophers, and political scientists who have contributed to the new book Scalia's Constitution: Essays on Law and Education. He will be among panelists discussing the book at a live-streamed September 15  event in Washington, D.C.

Ross Interviewed by Boston Herald

As heated rhetoric escalated this week between the United States and North Korea, Professor of Political Science Robert Ross was among experts interviewed about the role of China by the Boston Herald.

Trump and Regime Change in Iran

Trying to change Iran's regime may not change its policies--or its attitude toward Washington--any more successfully than it has in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and beyond, writes Assistant Professor of Political Science Lindsey O'Rourke, co-author of an op-ed for the WashingtonPost.com.

The First 100 Days

What will the first 100 days of the Trump Administration bring for immigration, health care, the economy, the environment, and other areas? Political Science's Kay Schlozman, Dennis Hale, and David Hopkins weigh in for the Boston College Chronicle.

Campaign Manager Paul Manafort has ties to Kremlin

Professor of Political Science Marc Landy discussed the significance of reports that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has ties to a pro-Kremlin political party in Ukraine, in an interview with NECN.

Russian Hacking in 2016

According to Assistant Professor Lindsey O'Rourke, the U.S. tried to change other countries' governments 72 times during the Cold War. In an article for the Washington Post, she discusses what can be learned about Russian hacking in 2016 from past U.S. covert operations.  

Jonathan Laurence provided commentary on the Trump inauguration

Professor of Political Science Jonathan Laurence provided commentary on the Trump inauguration for French television news network BFM.

David Deese was appointed Fulbright Scholar

Professor David Deese was appointed the Fulbright Scholar/Tallinn Professor at Tallinn University in Estonia for April-May 2017.  He taught a graduate course on International Relations at the University's School of Diplomacy and gave lectures.

Civil Rights

O'Neill Professor of American Politics R. Shep Melnick talks about how civil rights enforcement got swept into the culture wars, and what a new administration can do about it in the Hechinger Report. 

Perspectives on Immigration

The current liberal perspective on immigration policy representis a shift that has not received much scrutiny, writes Professor Peter Skerry, who provides historical background in the Boston Sunday Globe "Ideas."-- a piece also highlighted by the New York Times. |  Earlier this month, he wrote on the Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. presence for Foreign Affairs.

Asymmetric Politics

Associate Professor David Hopkins discusses the Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the light they shed on his theory of asymmetric politics, in an interview with Salon.

Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win

Assistant Professor of Political Science Peter Krause discusses his new bookRebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win in an interview with NECN "The Take."

John Marshall Project

An initiative that aims to foster reasoned, respectful discussion among students offers a template for civic engagement, according to organizers of, and participants in, the Undergraduate Marshall Fellows Program--a component of the John Marshall Project.

Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award

Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award
Professor of the Practice of Political Science Kathleen Bailey, co-director of the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program, associate director of the Islamic Civilization and Societies Program, and an energetic supporter of international education opportunities, is this year's winner of BC's Phi Beta Kappa teaching award.