Professor Christine Barbour has been selected as a recipient of the Walter Center for Career Achievement 2026 Career Impact Award for her outstanding work as Director of the POLS DC Internship Program!
The Career Impact Award is a new alumni-nominated award intended to celebrate the impact that faculty have on their students’ lifelong success.
Professor Steven Webster was quoted in an article featured on the front page of the national NPR website. He was also featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. "Americans do have a preference for living near co-partisans," Webster, says. However, "things like the Affordability of homes [and] living in a good school district far outweigh any explicit partisan-based motivation for choosing one location over another."
Professor Aurelian Craiutu delivered a keynote address, “The Archipelago of Moderation” at a conference on political moderation co-organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Ludwig Erhard Forum in Berlin on June 3, 2026. Drawing on Montesquieu and Tocqueville, he explained how moderation evolved from an ancient ethical ideal into a feature of modern constitutional government. In his lecture he showed how examples such as Germany’s social-market economy, the democratic opposition movements of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and Scandinavian political practice demonstrated that moderation can promote concrete reforms.
Professor Noah Eber-Schmid published a new book titled Founding Fanatics: Extremism and the Formation of American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2025). The book challenges the standard view that nonviolent tolerance and calm rationality are the only ways to build a democracy.
Professor William Scheuerman also published a new book titled Property Disobedience as Protest: Rethinking Political Nonviolence (Penn Press, 2026). The book tackles challenging and politically timely questions. When, if ever, are politically motivated property harms justifiable? What standards should we expect of those pursuing them to meet, under democratic conditions? Focusing on identifiably nonviolent varieties of what Scheuerman calls property disobedience, his book explores a variety of real-life examples, both past and present, to understand how and why such acts may be politically justifiable—or should instead be viewed as beyond the pale.
Professor Vanessa Cruz Nichols was featured on the Noon Edition of Indiana Public Media.
This October, Professor Emeritus Sumit Ganguly is publishing a new co-edited book with Klaus Brummer (Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt). Transnational Repression: A Comparative Perspective Across Autocracies and Democracies will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Professor Emeritus Jack Bielasiak gave the presentation “Opening the Gates: The Founding of the American Studies and Polish Studies Centers,” at the 50th year Commemoration of the Indiana- Warsaw Universities Exchange Conference at Warsaw University, which took place June 26-28, 2026.
The College of Arts