Autumn 2020
What a year, and more to come! If student evaluations are to be believed, our sudden transition to remote instruction last spring went well. I am grateful to our instructors, graduate students and undergraduates for responding to this completely unexpected challenge. We also had to cancel our department convocation - deeply disappointing for many graduating seniors - but our staff deserves appreciation for producing a virtual convocation (that included a procession... Read more
We are very happy to welcome a brilliant new scholar to our department this fall. Noga Rotem studied for her PhD in the Department of Political Science in Brown University, and earned her bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Ben-Gurion University in Israel, both summa cum laude. She has been a teaching fellow at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and was the recipient of a graduate fellowship from the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University.
Noga’s research... Read more
W. Lance Bennett received his Ph.D. from Yale and has spent his entire academic career at the University of Washington. Lance is the author of 12 books, hundreds of articles, and numerous research grants. He is also the recipient of more than a dozen book and career achievement awards, including for the best book published in Political Communication in the last 10 years (When the Press Fails, co-authored with former... Read more
In the Seattle Times Opinion piece, "Is our cancel culture killing free speech?," Prof. Victor Menaldo starts with the statement,"Once upon a time, folks who considered themselves left of center believed in and practiced free speech and freedom of conscience. They saw these things not only as a fundamental right that... Read more
Dr. Jerome (Jerry) Kohl, our Administrative Assistant, passed unexpectedly this summer. Jerry was a thoughtful, kind and witty individual, an excellent editor and a cat lover. But few of us appreciated that the person collecting the mail every morning was, among other things, the world’s foremost expert on German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Jerry grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska as one of 4 children of a military family. He played clarinet in the Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra during high school... Read more
