Ted Carmines left this world peacefully on Monday, July 7, 2025, with his wife, Ethel, by his side. Known worldwide as one of the top scholars on race in American politics–a topic that goes to the heart of American history and the American political structure– Ted earned the respect and admiration of social scientists for his outstanding and productive research record, his excellence in teaching, and his commitment to serve the university and the profession. According to Gary Jacobson, distinguished professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, Ted is “without question among the most accomplished, productive, and influential scholars of his generation.”
Ted grew up in Hampton, in Tidewater Virginia, the second of two sons of Alvin Allison Carmines and Katherine Graham Carmines of Hampton, VA. His other lifelong commitment was to Ethel Lee Johnson Carmines, who became his wife in 1965 –the start of a devoted partnership that thrived for almost 60 years.
After receiving his undergraduate degree at Old Dominion University in 1968, Ted qualified as a public school teacher (with maybe a bit of help from Ethel) and taught junior high school for two years at Benjamin Syms Junior High School from 1964-1968, an experience forever etched in his memory. He then returned to academia, earning an MA in government at the College of William and Mary and was recruited to graduate school at SUNY-Buffalo (now The University at Buffalo – the State University of New York), where he completed a PhD in political science in 1975.
Ted joined IU’s Department of Political Science in 1975 as a visiting assistant professor, attained a tenure-track appointment the following year, and became a full professor in 1984. The department voted him Chair for seven years (a feat of endurance reflecting his colleagues’ admiration of his talent for negotiation) and also appointed him frequently to the departmental Personnel Committee (dealing with promotion and tenure cases as well as other central departmental matters). He received IU’s Bicentennial Medal in 2020; the College of Arts and Sciences 2019 Distinguished Faculty Award, and in 2008 he was selected to present the Herman B. Wells Distinguished Lecture to Indiana University’s Society for the Institute of Advanced Study. He was honored as an Indiana University Distinguished Professor, the Warner O. Chapman Professor of Political Science, a Rudy Professor, and he also headed the Center on American Politics, which has recently been named in his honor as the result of a generous gift from a former political science student. Ted worked with Rep. Lee Hamilton by serving for many years as Director of Research for the university’s Center on Representative Government, a non-partisan, educational institution providing extensive, free resources to schools among others.
Ted was also known as an excellent teacher–a passionate advocate for democracy and social science. He taught classes ranging from voting behavior, public opinion, and political psychology to Congress and representation, econometrics, survey methodology, and philosophy of social science, and he mentored generations of scholars who are now well-known political scientists in their own right.
Ted began his important work on race and politics as a grad student, culminating in the publication of his landmark book with James Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics in 1989 by Princeton University Press. The book examined the role of racial issues in both congressional policy-making and public attitudes over time. Ted noted that racial attitudes and policies have been the shapers and reshapers of American politics, with the visceral character –the deep personal impact that does not depend on extensive knowledge or transient events– that leads them to dominate people’s political orientations. Racial issues led to the restructuring of the Republican and Democratic Party coalitions in the mid to late 1900s. That coalitional change, in turn, produced shifts in party policies, increasingly close elections at the national level, frequent changes in party control of the federal government, and the resulting gridlock and voluntary relinquishment of congressional power that we see today.
Issue Evolution met with immediate acclaim and was soon honored with the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award as the Best Political Science Publication on US National Policy. According to political scientist Bernard Grofman, “This is one of the most important books in political science to have been published in the post-World War II era. It is a book indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand contemporary American politics and public opinion.” The book’s impact has only grown since that time; in 2012 it won the APSA’s Philip Converse Award as the most outstanding and influential book published at least five years prior to the award.
Attitudes and policies toward race in the US have undergone significant change during the past half-century; researchers faced the challenge of finding new ways to measure attitudes that were ambivalent, elusive, and in the process of change. Ted and Paul M. Sniderman of Stanford University met this challenge by using innovative experimental methods to trace the evolution of racial issues. In their 1997 book Reaching Beyond Race, published by Harvard University Press, they concluded that racial attitudes and policy were rooted in more than racial bigotry. The attitudinal field had broadened over time, to include the ideological characteristics of individualism, fairness, and rejection of preferential treatment of some groups relative to others. In 1998, like Issue Evolution, Reaching Beyond Race won the APSA’s award for the best political science publication in the field of US National Policy. Two decades into his career in political science, Ted had set and re-set the agenda for a central issue in the discipline.
His research productivity has been one of the most striking characteristics of Ted’s career. Since 1974, he has authored or coauthored more than 160 publications, which have been cited over 11,500 times. The quality of his research has earned him some of the highest honors in the social sciences, including election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A full list of honors he has received would require more patience than most readers may possess, but they include two fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, other fellowships and visiting scholar positions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford (UK); Princeton University, and the College of William and Mary. He has been chosen president and treasurer of the Midwest Political Science Association and won five awards for the best paper presented at various national political science meetings.
“A scholar of his stature could have gone anywhere he wanted, but he chose instead to direct his considerable talent toward institution-building at Indiana University,” says Diana Mutz, Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His commitment to IU included a decades-long loyalty to the university’s football team at times when loyalty to that program required more perseverance than rational belief.
Ted’s life and work lives in the memory of his loving wife Ethel, their daughter Paige Alexandra Carmines of San Diego, and Paige’s children, Elijah James, Maxwell Graham, and Scarlett Rose, as well as innumerable colleagues, students, and friends throughout the world. He was preceded in death by his parents and his brother, the Rev. Al Carmines of New York, New York.
Ted lived his life exactly as he and Ethel planned, having accomplished his aims and blazed a path that many others will follow. Ted elected to have his remains buried in Hampton, VA (his birthplace), Williamsburg, VA (his favorite place to visit, especially at Christmas), and Bloomington, IN.
