Research

Teaching
 


University of Washington
Department of Political Science
Box 353530
Seattle, WA  98195-3530

Email:


 

 Welcome to my home page!  I'm a professor of political science and an adjunct professor of comparative religion and communication at the University of Washington.  I study American domestic politics.  Under that umbrella, I have focused on communication and messaging, economic issues, business groups and lobbying, political parties, and initiatives and referenda.  My area of concentration most recently has been religion.  My latest book, pictured at the left, is Right from Wrong:  Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds.  It offers a secular account of how we can obtain an objective morality.  My previous books include Secular Faith:  How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics; The Right Talk:  How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society and American Business and Political Power:  Public Opinion, Elections, and Democracy.

At the University of Washington, I teach "Seeking Truth in an Age of Misinformation, Cynicism, and Political Polarization" and "Free Will, Nature, and Nurture in Politics and Society."  In those two courses, I take a multidisciplinary approach that draws not only from my home discipline of political science but also philosophy, psychology, communication, anthropology, neuroscience, and genetics.  I also teach "Introduction to Research and Data in Political Science," which covers research design and data analysis for questions of interest to political scientists.