Jonathan Beck

Jonathan C. Beck is a lecturer in the departments of Political Science and Law, Societies and Justice (LSJ). He earned his Ph.D. in political science in 2022 from the University of Washington. His dissertation, Fees Rise, Class Divide: Higher Education, Inequality, and Student Social Movements examines the politics of tuition fees in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and student efforts to influence the direction of higher education policy. He has published an article based on his dissertation research with Law & Social Inquiry. In "Inequality and the Human Right to Tuition Free Higher Education: Mobilizing Human Rights Law in the German Movement Against Tuition Fees," Jonathan examines the ways in which students and their allies adopted human rights discourse to attribute blame for extant inequality in higher education to policymakers, in the process expanding their coalition and demands for a just and equitable education system more broadly. At the University of Washington, Jonathan has taught classes on wide-ranging topics in law and society studies, human rights, and comparative and international law.

Jonathan is a Buffalo, NY native, alumnus of Canisius College, Fulbright scholarship alumnus, and 2018-19 recipient of a DAAD research grant for doctoral candidates, with which he conducted dissertation research in Berlin.