Department of Politics

Dennis Coyle

Graduate Program Coordinator. Teaching and research interests include: liberal constitutionalism, property rights and regulation, social science theory, and generally the interplay of institutions, culture, and values in law, policy, and administration. He is the author of Property Rights and the Constitution and co-editor of Politics, Policy, and Culture. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Catholic University Law Review, and The Public Interest. Among other honors, he has been a visiting scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center and an Institute for Humane Studies Cassidy Fellow.

Associate Professor, Ph.D. California-Berkeley, 1988. Contact via email.

Maryann Cusimano Love

Her research and teaching interests include U.S. foreign policy, security studies, political psychology, and bureaucracy. She serves on the governing boards of Women in International Security and the International Society of Political Psychology, and has received a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs. Presently, she is completing work on a book length publication concerned with new developments in U.S. foreign policy.

Associate Professor, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1993. Contact via email.

Christopher Darnton

His research explores causal relationships between domestic and international politics, especially in Latin America and in US-Latin American relations. He is particularly interested in how domestic interest groups distort national security policymaking with respect to enduring rivalries, conflict resolution, regional integration, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, and state-building. He taught previously at Reed College and has conducted fieldwork in Argentina and Brazil.

Matthew Green

Undergraduate Program Coordinator. His research and teaching interests include congressional politics, U.S. elections, and American political development. He has been a Brookings Institution Research Fellow, and his research has appeared in a number of journals, including Legislative Studies Quarterly, PS: Political Science & Politics, Political Science Research, and Electoral Studies. Current research projects include a book-length manuscript examining the role of the Speaker of the House in influencing legislative outcomes.

Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Yale University, 2004. See Dr. Green's Webpage. Contact via email.

Phillip Henderson

Chair of the Department of Politics. Is the author of Managing the Presidency: The Eisenhower Legacy, and editor of The Presidency Then and Now. He is currently writing Twelve Leaders Who Made a Difference - a comparative study of U.S. political leaders who had a profound impact on the institutions in which they served. He has published articles and book chapters in Perspectives on Political Science, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Political Science Reviewer, The Executive Office of the President, and The Presidency and National Security Policy. Teaching interests include: U.S. political leadership since 1789, executive branch policymaking, the U.S. presidency, and American national institutions.

Associate Professor, Ph.D. Michigan, 1986. Contact via email.

John A. Kromkowski

Has written and edited various publications in the field of urban and ethnic politics, including his award-winning study, Juvenile Crime and Neighborhood Deteriorization. Dr. Kromkowski offers courses in the fields of urban government and politics, ethnic politics, and comparative urbanism. Presently, Dr. Kromkowski also serves as an Assistant Dean for the School of Arts & Sciences. In this capacity he directs CUA's study abroad programs and Washington area internship programs. He also is the current president of the National Center for Urban and Ethnic Affairs.

Associate Professor, Ph.D. Notre Dame, 1972. Contact via email.

James P. O'Leary

His teaching and publications have focused on political economy, comparative political development, and American foreign policy. His current research interest is the political economy of capitalist development in Chile, India, and the Peoples Republic of China. Dr. O'Leary has recently published a chapter, "Third World Developmentalism," in Modern Capitalism, and has published a textbook, Power, Principles and Interests.

Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins, 1976. View Dr. O'Leary's CV. Contact via email.

Claes G. Ryn

Ryn's areas of research and teaching include the history of Western political thought, ethics and politics, politics and the imagination, historicism, the theory of knowledge, conservatism, American political thought, and constitutionalism. He has taught also at the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, and Louisiana State University.  The recipient of many awards and grants, Professor Ryn was named Outstanding Graduate Professor by the CUA Graduate Student Association in 1992.  His many books include A Common Human Ground, America the Virtuous, Will, Imagination and Reason, and Democracy and the Ethical Life. He has published and lectured widely on both sides of the Atlantic and in China. In 2000 he gave the Distinguished Foreign Scholar Lectures at Beijing University, which published this series as a book, Unity Through Diversity (in Chinese translation).  Three of Ryn's books and many of his other writings have appeared in Chinese translation.  Ryn is editor of Humanitas and chairman of the National Humanities Institute (NHI). He served as president of the Philadelphia Society and is currently the President of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. He was chairman of the Department from 1979 to 1985.

See nhinet.org, the NHI web site, for more information.

Professor, Ph.D. Louisiana State, 1974. View Dr. Ryn's CV. Contact via email.

Stephen Schneck

Schneck is the author and editor of several books including Letting Be: Fred Dallmayr's Cosmopolitical Vision (2006). He teaches about the history of political philosophy, American political thought, and contemporary political theories.

Associate Professor, Ph.D. Notre Dame, 1984. See Dr. Schneck's webpage. View Dr. Schneck's CV. Contact via email.

Wallace J. Thies

Is the author of three books: Why Nato Endures, Friendly Rivals, and When Governments Collide. In 1979 and 1980, he worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the U.S. Department of State as an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1989 he was a NATO research fellow.

Professor, Ph.D. Yale, 1977. View Dr. Thies' CV. Contact via email.

Joan Barth Urban

Author of Moscow and the Italian Communist Party (winner of the American Historical Association's Marraro Prize in 1986) and Russia's Communists at the Crossroads (a Choice selection as "Outstanding Academic Book" in 1997), she has also edited/coauthored several collective volumes and published numerous articles and chapters on international communist affairs and post-Soviet Russian politics. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation, United States Institute of Peace, National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, and other institutions. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, she has made semi-annual visits to Russia for research and interviews. She is a research associate of George Washington University's Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies and has been a visiting scholar in Moscow at the scholar in Moscow at the Institute of Scientific Information on the Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her current teaching interests include Russian politics under Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin, Cold War history, and comparative governments of West and East-Central Europe.

Professor, Ph.D. Harvard, 1967. View Dr. Urban's CV. Contact via email.

David Walsh

A specialist in political theory, he is the author of a three-volume study of modernity addressing the totalitarian crisis, the resurgence of liberal democracy, and the philosophical revolution of the modern world. Intended as a guide to the multiple facets of the age in which we live the volumes appeared as After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (1990), The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997), and The Modern Philosophical Revolution: The Luminosity of Existence (2008). He has also published The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfillment: A Study of Jacob Boehme (1983), The Third Millennium: Reflections on Faith and Reason (1999), and Guarded By Mystery: Meaning in a Postmodern Age (1999). Walsh has edited three volumes of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin.

Professor, Ph.D. University of Virginia, 1978. View Dr. Walsh's CV. Contact via email.

John Kenneth White

Author of The Fractured Electorate, The New Politics of Old Values, Still Seeing Red, and The Values Divide, White has also co-edited several works, including: Governing New York State, Challenges to Party Government, The Politics of Ideas, and The Collapse of the Old Order: Political Parties in a Post-Industrial World. Professor White has written extensively about the American party system and the U.S. presidency.  Notably, he authored The Values Divide: American Politics and Culture in Transition, which examines how values play an important role in motivating people to vote and, in the process, have contributed to significant changes within the Democratic and Republican party coalitions.  In addition, Professor White's newest book, Barack Obama's America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era, explores the important role demography plays in determining our collective political futures and why Obama's victory in 2008 signals the onset of an electoral landscape that is more favorable to the Democratic party.

Professor, Ph.D. Connecticut, 1980. View Dr. White's CV. Contact via email.

Andrew Yeo

His broad research interests focus at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics. His current research project explores the politics of overseas military bases, focusing on the impact of security alliances on social movements and domestic anti-base pressure. His research and teaching interests include international relations theory, international security, U.S. relations in East Asia, social movements, and religion and international relations.

Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Cornell, 2008. See Dr. Yeo's webpage.