Campbell Institute News

As public concerns about crime mounted in the 1980s and 1990s, AR-15 marketers started to adjust their depiction of what was on the receiving end of the barrel. “People, rather than animals, were the target,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. “That allows it to be sold more as a self-defense weapon, particularly inside the home.”

“We sort of show at least some suggestive survey evidence that talking to people very explicitly and straightforwardly about these historical reasons why inequality persists can at least at the margins make people more open to thinking about race in a more structural way [and] taking inequality seriously,” says Steven White, assistant professor of political science.

"Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees" (Oxford University Press, 2021), written by Associate Professor of Political Science Lamis Abdelaaty, received the Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association's Ethnicity, Nationalism, & Migration Studies section.

Dennis Rasmussen, professor of political science, has written “The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter” (University Press of Kansas, 2023). 

"Nikki Haley has to negotiate the very thin line between differentiating herself from Donald Trump and still appealing to—or not alienating herself from—his supporters, who still constitute the vast majority of CPAC activists and GOP primary participants," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science.

"We know that Black women are paid less than their white counterparts, are expected to work longer hours with fewer pay raises, and are the most likely to be in unemployment lines when those rates increase. So these types of discriminatory practices shape the types of visceral effects that happen to Black women's bodies," says Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science.

“That experience of having your time wasted is uniquely offensive, insulting, upsetting,” Elizabeth Cohen, professor of political science, tells Bloomberg. “Time is a unique resource and once that segment of your life is gone, you're never getting it back.”

“If Republicans get in the mindset of, ‘The first attribute we need is the ability to beat Joe Biden,’ then she becomes a very attractive candidate,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.

"For a lot of activists and organizers on the ground, when we talk about abolishing, our idea of abolishing police stems from the idea that there has to be different forms of service and care that allow for communities to take care of themselves and not rely on the police for the whole host of services that they currently provide," says Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science. 

The governor of New York possesses too much formal power to think about writing her off, says Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. “She has an enormous amount of power in the budget,” he says, “and that’s the thing that’s coming up next.”

As a fellow, Lamis Abdelaaty, associate professor of political science, will work on her proposal, "The Emissary Speaks: Political Agency in Refugee-UNHCR Correspondence."

“Trump starts off with a huge advantage in terms of name recognition and money in the bank—not his own money, but money from 2020 and money that he’s raising now,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, professor and chair of political science. “So there is absolutely the case that he could be the nominee.”

"If people decide that they will vote for somebody, regardless of what they may have done in their past, that's one thing," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. "But if they vote under the misconception that somebody is what they say they are and then they find out later when it's too late that [it] is wrong. That's a very different situation."

"Attitudes about Refugees and Immigrants Arriving in the United States: A Conjoint Experiment," authored by Associate Professor of Political Science Lamis Abdelaaty, was published in Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Eleven Maxwell School students have been awarded grants from the Syracuse Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE) and the Renée Crown University Honors Program. The awards provide up to $7,500 in support for original undergraduate research projects.

Zhang, assistant professor of political science, has received up to $200K to research the role of citizens in the governance of artificial intelligence systems. 

"Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID" (Princeton University Press, 2022), co-authored by Professor and Chair of Political Science Shana Kushner Gadarian, was reviewed in Foreign Affairs. "Their book is a sophisticated study, based on voluminous data, of U.S. politics as revealed by the strains and stresses of the pandemic," writes Jessica T. Mathews.