The APSA Nominating Committee is pleased to announce its 2024 nominees for the APSA Council. Each has agreed to serve if elected. The call for nominations was circulated among the membership, and outreach specifically to APSA committees and organized sections was conducted. The committee made its decisions after careful deliberation and consideration for the diversity of the field and the varied interests of political scientists. The candidates will be put to a vote by the full membership via electronic ballot in August. Additional information about APSA elections is available at this link: https://www.apsanet.org/ABOUT/Governance/Elections.
This year’s nominating committee is composed of Michael Jones-Correa, University of Pennsylvania (chair); Kalilah Brown-Dean, Wesleyan University; Victor Asal, University at Albany; Michelle T. Clarke, Dartmouth College; and Erik Voeten, Georgetown University.
PRESIDENT-ELECT
SUSAN STOKES
Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor of political science, the University of Chicago
Statement of Views: Perhaps never in our history do citizens in the US and around the world look to political scientists for answers to pressing problems. APSA will continue to be a place that helps us do this work, and to do it better. We need to constantly identify and support young scholars and those from communities that face obstacles in their professional lives. As a founding member of Bright Line Watch and faculty director of the Chicago Center on Democracy, I have dedicated the last several years to leading research teams focused on democracy and teaching collaboratively on this topic. With many years of joint research with international scholars, in particular in Latin America, I have a strong belief in the need of our profession, and our organization, to tap the talents and imagination of people across the globe.
VICE PRESIDENT
JULIET HOOKER
Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in political science, Brown University
Statement of Views: This is a difficult time for APSA, both because of the continued attacks on higher education and because of the alienation of some members after the disagreements over holding the annual meeting in 2023 in Los Angeles despite the strike by hospitality workers. I feel strongly that the way forward for APSA to repair its relationship with members is by having greater transparency and accountability about decision-making by the association’s leadership. We are also in a moment when higher education is facing sustained efforts to curtail or eliminate the principles of academic freedom and faculty governance, not to mention long-term trends toward more contingent and precarious faculty employment, as donors and elected officials attempt to dictate what happens on university campuses. In this context it is crucial to have a strong APSA that can help make the case for the value and importance of political science and higher education more generally.
VINCENT HUTCHINGS
Hanes Walton, Jr. Collegiate Professor of political science, University of Michigan
Statement of Views: I have been a member of APSA for over 30 years. In that time, I have witnessed a lot of change in the profession and political world more broadly. If elected vice president, I would work on the issues that have motivated me throughout my career. These issues include understanding the various ways that racial considerations are implicated in our political system, seeking to diversify the profession on multiple dimensions (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, and class), and uplifting and protecting graduate students as they transition into the profession. Our country is experiencing some of the most politically divisive and challenging times in my lifetime, but I still believe that expertise—and specifically political science—can play a productive role in helping us to understand and hopefully mitigate these conflicts. The American Political Science Association can play an indispensable role in this process by marshaling our collective expertise to address, and ultimately resolve, the most pressing political issues of the day. I look forward to strengthening the organization, extending its influence on topical political matters, and broadening the base of members who feel included.
CAROLINE TOLBERT
Distinguished University Professor of political science, the University of Iowa
Statement of Views: As vice president, my goal is more opportunities for meaningful, inclusive participation for APSA members. I aim to create bridges and improve communication between practitioners and researchers, among members working across subfields and using different methodological approaches, and between students and faculty. I am especially interested in elevating the visibility of political science research that seeks to improve governance, public policy, and foreign policy. In terms of teaching, I seek a broad education for our students, emphasizing mentoring, creative use of technology, research opportunities and internships, community-engaged research, methodological training, and professionalization. I am committed to promoting diversity in the Association via awards, mentoring, conferences, and the publication process of APSA’s journals. In sum, I seek ways that we can reward research that engages and addresses real-world policy problems and works with community stakeholders. I believe these conversations will help scholars tackle the many political and policy problems we face in the US and globally.
COUNCIL
LONNA ATKESON
LeRoy Collins Eminent Scholar in civic education and political science, Florida State University
Statement of Views: I am honored to be nominated to the APSA council. The American Political Science Association represents a large cadre of scholars across multiple subfields, regions of the world, and who work both inside and outside of the academy. Importantly, political science engages in research that is relevant, timely, and helpful to policy makers and government officials. My own research efforts have often been applied, which has made me realize how much political science as a discipline has to offer the world. Therefore, it is my goal to encourage and promote research projects, contracts, grants, dialogue, symposia, conferences, testimony, and other interactions between academic scholars and policy makers, legislators, NGOs, and other interested parties. We have something important and valuable to contribute to our communities, societies, nations, and world; we need to embrace it.
NADIA BROWN
Professor of government and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Georgetown University
Statement of Views: I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be considered for the APSA Council. If it were not for APSA’s commitment to the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) I would not be a member of the profession today. It is because of my experiences with RBSI that I am committed to helping APSA’s ongoing efforts to meaningfully and substantively increase the ethno-racial, gender, class, and sexual orientation diversity in the discipline of political science. My teaching, service, and research reflect my commitment to these goals. Additionally, I am a strong believer in intersectional mentorship and am an advocate of members of underprivileged groups as evidenced by my service-informed teaching and scholarship. While universities and colleges grapple with the future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives I welcome the opportunity to assist APSA in developing resources for political science educators to remain actively engaged in this space.
STACIE GODDARD
Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of political science, Wellesley College
Statement of Views: It is an honor to be nominated for APSA’s governing council. I have been fortunate to have served in a few positions in APSA, including as chair of the nominating committee, and as president of the International History and Politics section, so I have some experience with the important work APSA does for the discipline. I hope to contribute to four pressing challenges. First, to help the profession analyze and respond to increasing challenges to academic freedom. Second, to help ensure that, in the midst of these challenges, we retain our commitment to diversity and inclusion in our field, reaffirm our interest in engaging with, and represent diverse perspectives. Third, to make sure APSA continues to produce careful, evidence-based, public-facing work, accessible to readers outside of academia, that provides necessary insight into even the most contested issues. And finally, within the discipline, to help support our membership through obstacles, especially increasing vulnerability on the job market and the need to support those seeking careers outside of academia.
ANNA GRZYMALA-BUSSE
Michelle and Kevin Doublas Professor in the Department of Political Science, Stanford
Statement of Views: The strength of APSA lies in its diversity of analytical approaches, viewpoints, and experiences, and its commitment to research integrity, transparency, and collaboration. I believe we can make APSA even stronger in three ways: first, we need to articulate and emphasize our commitment to academic freedom, transparency, intellectual rigor, and ethical standards. Second, we need to pay greater attention to the needs of vulnerable scholars: contingent faculty, graduate students, untenured faculty, and scholars working in regimes with questionable commitments to individual and academic rights. Third, we need to better serve our members: by making decisions more transparently, communicating them more effectively, and ensuring that our actions align with our core values.
JULIE MUELLER
Professor of political science, Southern Maine Community College
Statement of Views: It is an honor to be nominated to serve on the APSA Council and to represent community college faculty and political science education more broadly. As a long-time member, I have seen the value that APSA provides for political scientists at various points in their careers, and I value the opportunities for collaboration it provides with my peers across the country. I am passionate about supporting our colleagues teaching at two-year institutions and as contingent faculty, and I hope to continue to encourage them to become active members, to provide them with useful resources, and to find ways to advocate for them within APSA. Continuing to expand the accessibility of meetings and programs is one way we can do this. For example, as a mother with a limited budget, I benefited greatly from the shift made toward more online programming since COVID. Resources for faculty with limited time and institutional support should continue to be a priority. During my tenure on the status committee, I pushed for APSA to prioritize improving communication and collaboration between two- and four-year institutions and creating avenues within the organization for this to happen.
MELISSA ROGERS
Associate professor of political science, Claremont Graduate University
Statement of Views: It is an honor to be nominated for the APSA Council. If elected, I will bring to the council a focus on programming to meet the needs of all APSA members. APSA represents scholars from around the globe and across the full range of institutions—from community colleges to PhD granting institutions, and teaching-focused to research-focused institutions. I consider it very important for APSA to keep in mind the inequalities in terms of research and travel funding, research time, and access to resources across faculty and students in the discipline. I will bring to the council a perspective from a small, graduate-focused university facing extreme challenges to our funding model. I will push APSA to think deeply about the ongoing fiscal crisis in higher education, especially for under-resourced universities, and how APSA might support scholars in turbulent times.
SARA RUSHING
Professor of political science, Montana State University in Bozeman
Statement of Views: I am honored to be nominated to run for the APSA Council. Having started my term as co-president of the Association for Political Theory in 2019 and navigating my first year in that role during COVID, I became keenly aware of how important our disciplinary community is. This is particularly true for scholars in very small academic departments, those from rural areas with few universities and limited proximate colleagues (like in Montana), and those lacking built-in mentoring and professional development opportunities closer to home. In addition to the amazing in-person conferences we attend, more regular opportunities to engage with each other online throughout the year are essential. Such events can address needs that the annual conferences cannot meet: small group mentoring around particular professional challenges; presentation of ideas or works in development that are not ready for prime time (or even Sunday at 8:00 a.m.); pedagogical conversations or manuscript workshopping; the chance for mid-career scholars to play leadership roles in helping advance junior faculty; etc. Opportunities to gather virtually for such purposes—in addition to the obvious scholarly and climate benefits—enhances a sense of disciplinary connection and belonging, which can be one major way to increase the diversity of voices and issues highlighted within our field. Moreover, at a time when the humanities and social sciences are under particular attack within the university, our disciplinary connection and collective voice is crucial for helping make the case that political theory and political science matter for the study of, and democratically sustainable practice of, politics.
CHERIE STRACHAN
Professor of political science, University of Akron
Statement of Views: I am honored to be nominated to serve on APSA’s executive council. Throughout the course of my career, while working at regional publics serving many first-generation and at-risk students, I have purposefully pursued research, teaching, service, and administrative positions that align with two priorities. The first of these is my commitment to diversity and inclusion. The second of these is my commitment to civic engagement pedagogy, which focuses on teaching students not only the knowledge, but also the skills and dispositions required for public-spirited participation in an inclusive democracy. I appreciate that APSA has also been willing to evolve to prioritize these two agendas, to meet my own and other members’ professional needs. For example, as my applied research and administrative positions increased my involvement in higher education’s civic engagement movement, I found my way to the Political Science Education Section to network with those who established what was at the time a fairly new section journal, the Journal of Political Science Education. As pedagogy and civic engagement initiatives became more integral to our discipline’s work, APSA expanded professional development opportunities by establishing the Teaching & Learning conference, publishing the Teaching Civic Engagement series of edited collections, establishing the APSA Educate website, and supporting the launch of the new Civic Engagement section. I believe that expanding these commitments, along with commitments to diversity and inclusion, is essential in order for our discipline to successfully address the threats of democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism at home and abroad. Hence, I see my current role as helping to build on these endeavors, not only to highlight this important work, but to enhance opportunities for others. We must ensure our discipline’s efforts on these fronts are dynamic, responding not only to a rapidly changing political environment, but also to the needs of our increasingly diverse student bodies and communities. I appreciate the opportunity to continue to support and to grow these important initiatives as a member of the Council. ■
