MSSC Faculty

Michael Barkun
Professor, Political Science
Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1965

Professor Barkun is the author of several books, including Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement and A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. His most recent book is Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Policy Since 9/11.  He has also published nearly 75 articles and book chapters.  He has served as a consultant to the FBI.  He sits on the editorial boards of Terrorism and Political Violence, The Journal for the Study of Radicalism.  He also serves on the International Advisory Board for the Impact of Religion project at Uppsala University in Sweden.  

David H. Bennett
Professor, History
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1963

Professor Bennett’s  teaching and research interests focus on modern American history and modern military history.  He is author of The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement, Demagogues in the Depression and other works.   He has been named Syracuse University Scholar-Teacher of the Year,  Syracuse University Alumni Teacher of the Year,  and Outstanding Teacher in the College of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Chancellor’s Citation for Exception Academic Achievement and has been named Meredith Professor of History.   

Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Associate Professor, Political Science
Ph.D. American University

Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi is Associate Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs where he also serves as the Founding Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program and Co-Director of the Religion, Media and International Relations Program. Professor Boroujerdi received his BA in Political Science and Sociology from Boston University, and his Ph.D. in International Relations from the American University in Washington, D.C. His doctoral dissertation won the Foundation for Iranian Studies’ 1990 award for best Dissertation in the Field of Iranian Studies. From 1990 to 1992 he was respectively a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Boroujerdi was the 1997-98 recipient of the Maxwell School's Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for outstanding teaching, research, and service by a junior faculty member.

Norman Kutcher
Associate Professor, Department Chair, History
Ph.D., Yale University, 1991

Norman Kutcher is Associate Professor of History at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, where he specializes in the cultural, social, and intellectual history of late imperial and modern China. Although his interests are diverse, one constant theme in his work is the changing nature of rulership in dynastic China. His book, Mourning in Late Imperial China: Filial Piety and the State (Cambridge, 1999), is a study of the changing role of Confucianism as a limit on imperial power. His writings have also appeared in The American Historical Review, The Journal of Asian Studies, and The Wilson Quarterly.  He currently focuses on the domestic aspects of imperial power and is at work on a study of eunuchs in eighteenth-century China. Before coming to Syracuse in 1991, Kutcher received his Ph.D. at Yale University.

Deborah Pellow
Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1974

Deborah Pellow is a Professor of Anthropology at Maxwell whose research focuses on cultural and sub-cultural groups living in urban areas of plural society under conditions of social change. She has particular interest in West Africa, particularly Ghana and northern Nigeria, and in issues of urbanization, gender, ethnicity, space and place, and in American and world politics. Professor Pellow has also done research in Shanghai, China, while a visiting professor of history at Fudan University, and in Osaka and Kyoto, Japan, while a Fulbright lecturer. She is the author of four books and numerous articles. Professor Pellow completed her Ph.D. at Northwestern in 1974 with a dissertation titled Women in Accra: Options for Autonomy. Prior to that, she completed an MA in Anthropology at Northwestern University and a BA in Anthropology at U Penn. Between degrees, she worked as an Applied Anthropologist at Council for Community Services, in Metropolitan Chicago.

Stephen S. Webb
Professor, History
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1965

Professor Webb's multi-volume history, The Governors-General the rule of the British Army in Imperial Governance, 1569-1754, has been widely recognized in the New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. His fellowships include: The John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Foundation; the Royal Historical Society, the Charles Warren Center, Harvard; and the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg.