MPSA Blog
This Is the Best Time Ever to Study Political Science
This post originally appeared on Tom Pepinsky’s blog and is reposted here with permission. Here are ten questions that might be interesting to Americans these days. Is the Trump administration’s immigration executive order constitutional? Is the United States a democracy? How do we know? How does…
Alone and Working: Making the Transition to ABD
The change from being a PhD Student to a PhD Candidate is a big one. The moment we cross that threshold of becoming ABD, we fall in to a kind of purgatory where we are no longer students and not yet peers of our professors. This purgatory, or as it is better known as ABD, is something that no one…
I’m Not a Disgrace, I’m Just Wrong
Shortly after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I gave a talk to a local senior citizens group. The talk was largely informational, flavored by my analysis of what had happened. After the speech, a man walked up to me and told me he found me too partisan, that liberal bias in academia disturbed…
Race and “Ism”: Incoming Fire from All Directions
Since it is impossible to discuss the issue of racism from the beginning, I will just start where I find myself. As an Assistant professor, it is probably safe for me to say that the multi-directional pressures and demands from administrations, departments, students, and parents are universal in…
Help Preserve Federal Funding for the Humanities
NHA Annual meeting and Advocacy Day (Photo: Kwana Strong Photography) With a new President and Congress taking office this month, it is time to redouble our advocacy efforts on behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and other federal humanities funding streams. As a member of…
Polling for the 2016 Presidential Election: What Went Wrong?
As I write, Donald Trump is less than two weeks from being inaugurated as President of the United States. For political scientists, our “what the…?” moment involves the failure of most public-opinion polls to predict the results of the 2016 election. I joined numerous colleagues in assuming a…
MPSA Blog: Top 10 Posts from 2016
Regardless of your research interests, your academic (or Alt-Ac) role, or your aspirations for the new year, there is something on this list of MPSA’s most popular blog posts from 2016 that is sure to pique your interest: Q&A with the Founder of Women Also Know Stuff Recommended Reading:…
On the Eve of the 2017 Conference Season
As the Fall semester comes to a close, most academics in our field are readying for the upcoming hectic conference schedule starting with SPSA in New Orleans in January, ISA (February) in Baltimore, MPSA (April) in Chicago, and ending with WPSA (April) in Vancouver. Keeping this in mind, this post…
Policy Implementation, Representation, and Democratic Governance
At last year’s MPSA conference, Pamela McCann of USC Sol Price School of Public Policy was kind enough to ask me to participate in a roundtable discussion with other prominent scholars. The focus of the panel was “Why Do We Have No Theory of Policy Implementation?”. I agreed to participate and…
Election 2016 Lesson for the Media: New Journalistic Norms Needed to Cover Elections
The 2016 U.S. presidential election will stand out in the nation’s collective memory as a highly unusual event for many reasons. It featured two unique candidates, an election campaign that completely overturned the norms set by previous elections, a neglected voter base that showed an…