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 Eaton
Hall, 3rd Floor
Medford, Massachusetts 02155
Tel: (617) 627-3465
Fax: (617) 627-3660
 The Political Science Department at Tufts University is an
exclusively undergraduate department consisting of 17 tenured or
tenure-track faculty. The Department is located in Eaton Hall, on the
main quad of Tufts’ classic New England campus. The Department is
dedicated to excellence in teaching and in research.
Excellence in Teaching and Advising
Faculty in the Department teach in four subfields: American politics,
comparative politics, international relations, and political theory.
Within the American subfield, our courses cover political
institutions (Berry), public policy (McKissick, Portney), mass
political behavior and public opinion (Glaser, Portney, Schildkraut),
and constitutional law (Glater). Policy specializations include
environment (Portney), health care (McKissick), immigration and
language (Schildkraut), and welfare (Berry). Our comparative
politics curriculum spans the globe. We offer courses on regional
politics in Africa (Robinson), East Asia (Fujihira, Remick), Latin
America (Cruz), Western Europe (Eichenberg, Fujihira), and the
Middle East (Mufti), as well as courses that cross regional
boundaries and emphasize general themes such as democratization,
political economy, and state building. Our political theorists (Devigne,
Sullivan) teach both ancient and modern political thought, including
specialized courses on specific philosophers such as Machiavelli,
Montesquieu, and Nietzsche. In these classrooms, students also face
the enduring questions of political philosophy, questions relating
to liberty and equality, justice, democracy, power, and morality. In
the international relations subfield, our offerings cover national
security policy (Eichenberg, Taliaferro), American foreign policy
(Smith, Taliaferro), international political economy (Chase),
international law and organizations (Fletcher School faculty), and
the relationship of domestic to foreign policy (Eichenberg). We also
teach courses on regional issues of international relations (in the
Middle East, Africa, and Europe, in particular).
Our curriculum includes several courses outside the usual fare. We
occasionally arrange for courses taught by political professionals
and public figures, such as campaign consultant Michael Goldman
(“Media, Politics, and the Law”), former president of the
Massachusetts Senate Tom Birmingham (“Seminar: Theory and Practice
of State and Local Government”), and former New Hampshire Governor
Jeanne Shaheen (“Governing in a Partisan Environment”). Students
encounter different perspectives on international law in a special
course offered each year by a team of seven faculty members from
Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Some of our courses
cross departmental boundaries, such as the class on “E-Government,”
offered jointly by Political Science and Computer Science.
The university and the profession have recognized the high quality of
instruction in the Department with several awards. Our faculty have
won the prestigious Leibner Award for Distinguished Teaching and
Advising (Devigne, Mufti), the Lerman-Neubauer Prize for
intellectual mentorship (Glaser), and the UNITE Award for superior
teaching by junior faculty (Devigne, Remick, Chase, and Cruz).
Professor Portney received the American Political Science
Association's 1997 Rowman and Littlefield Award for Innovative
Teaching in Political Science, as well as an American Political
Science Association award for Best Instructional Software. The
quality of instruction extends well beyond these individuals, and
the Department offers students exposure to a dedicated, diverse, and
accomplished faculty.
 Classes
in the Department of Political Science vary widely in format and
size. For those beginning their study of political science the
Department offers a range of foundation courses, such as
“Introduction to Comparative Politics” and “Western Political
Thought.” Upper division courses are typically characterized by a
combination of lecture and discussion and almost all are small
enough to facilitate a good deal of interaction between individual
students and instructors. Students can also enroll in courses in two
different sets of seminars. Political Science seminars are limited
to just 15 undergraduates and rely completely on classroom
discussion and analysis of readings and other work. Our sophomore
seminars are just that: seminars only enrolling students in their
second year. Recent sophomore seminars include “Globalization and
National Politics,” “African American Politics,” and “Acquiring
Political Knowledge.” The advanced seminars are designed to be
capstone experiences for our undergraduate majors. Students
typically take a seminar in an area where they’ve developed some
background in previous courses and are ready to study a topic in
depth. These courses are typically filled by seniors but juniors can
enroll if space is available. Recent offerings include “Ethnicity
and American Foreign Policy,” “U.S. National Security in the
Twenty-first Century,” and “Postmodern Political Thought.”
During any one student’s four years at Tufts there will be more than
80 different courses offered in the Department of Political Science.
Even so, undergraduates can go outside of the Department to some
selected Tufts programs and receive political science credit for
approved courses. Advanced students can enroll with the instructor’s
permission in graduate courses at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, as well as in the Urban and Environmental Policy and
Planning program. A limited number of Political Science majors are
accepted into a five year BA-MA program with the Fletcher School.
Students apply during their junior year. Course work extends, of
course, beyond our campus through the Tufts-in-Washington program
and approved study abroad programs.
Although there is enormous variety in the classes offered and the
pedagogical approaches used, there is strong emphasis throughout the
Political Science curriculum on writing and on the development of
strong analytical and research skills. Underlying this philosophy is
the belief is that the best way to learn political science is to do
political science. That is, we want our students to conduct research
as a means of testing ideas about how the political system works.
There are some courses such as Professor Portney’s class on public
opinion where the entire class works together on a research project.
In that class students choose a topic, design a public opinion
survey, conduct the survey, and then analyze the computerized
results. In Professor Berry’s sophomore seminar on “Politics in the
City,” students are assigned to teams and each team spends the
semester researching and writing a large-scale paper on a topic of
immediacy in urban politics. Professor Sullivan’s seminars on
Machiavelli and Montesquieu emphasize close reading of original
texts. Each week students read the assigned work and some will write
papers for distribution to all before the weekly meeting. The
remainder of the students will write short response papers
critiquing one of the student papers. Class sessions debate these
papers and the critiques.
 The
emphasis on research is not limited to regular course offerings.
With permission and guidance by a member of the faculty, students
can devise an independent research project for course credit.
Students who have excelled during their first three years are
eligible to write a senior thesis (two semester credits) under the
guidance of a faculty mentor. All students writing a senior thesis
in the Department also meet together weekly with a faculty
instructor to discuss issues related to conducting advanced research
in the disciplines and to their specific projects. Undergraduates
are often hired when a faculty member needs a research assistant.
Both internal (Tufts University) and external grants are often
written with undergraduate research positions embedded in the
proposal.
The Department also values community involvement and efforts by
students to link research to social action. Applicants to Tufts with
an activist bent are encouraged to learn more about the University
College of Citizenship and Public Service (UCCPS). UCCPS runs many
community-oriented programs and our students have taken advantage of
many of them. Political Science majors are encouraged to pursue
University scholars and prizes such as the Citizenship and Public
Service Scholarships, which fund students who pursue
community-oriented service projects, and the Dutko Fellowships,
which provide funds enabling students to spend a year after
graduation working at an organization of their choice in Washington,
D.C. The Anne Borghesani Memorial Prize is particularly attractive
to students with a serious interest in comparative politics or
international relations, as it provides summer funds for research or
community involvement abroad.
Students choosing to major in Political Science select their own
advisor. Typically students will choose a professor who has
instructed them in a course and who they have come to get to know.
Under University rules students must declare a major no later than
the end of their sophomore year. Those students double-majoring in
Political Science and another discipline must still have a Political
Science advisor. All full-time faculty members in the Department
participate in advising.
Excellence
in Research and Scholarship
Members of the Department are actively engaged in research. By the
standard measure of the success, the Department’s publication record
is exceptionally strong. In recent years faculty have authored books
with the Brookings Institution Press, Cambridge University Press,
Century Foundation Press, Cornell University Press, Harvard
University Press, M.I.T. Press, Princeton University Press, and Yale
University Press, and edited several others. Department members have
books forthcoming from the university presses of Cambridge,
Michigan, Princeton, and Yale. Tufts bylines also have appeared in
such journals as American Behavioral Scientist, American Journal
of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science,
Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Diplomacy and
Statecraft, Diplomatic History, Harvard Asia Quarterly,
International Organizations, International Security, The Journal of
Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Local Environment, Middle
East Journal, Modern China, Political Behavior, Political Theory,
PS: Political Science and Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Review
of International Political Economy, Security Studies,
Twentieth-Century China, and World Politics.
 Faculty
members in the Department have been recognized with numerous awards
and prizes for their scholarship. Profs. Berry and Portney received
the Gladys Kammerer Award for the Best Book in American Politics and
the Award for Best Book in Urban Politics for their work, The
Rebirth of Urban Democracy (Brookings, 1993). Prof. Berry’s next
two books were also recognized for their outstanding contributions
to the discipline: The New Liberalism: The Rising Power of
Citizen Groups (Brookings Institution, 1999) received the Aaron
Wildavsky Award, given annually by the Policy Studies Organization
for the best book in the field of public policy; and A Voice for
Nonprofits (Brookings Institution, 2003) won the Leon D. Epstein
Outstanding Book Award, given annually in the field of parties and
political organization. Prof. Glaser received the 1997 V.O. Key
Award from the Southern Political Science Association for Race,
Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South. Two Tufts
political scientists have won awards from the American Political
Science Association for best papers delivered at the annual American
Political Science Association Conference, Prof. Glaser in the
Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior division and Prof.
Eichenberg in the Foreign Policy division. In 2003, Prof. Smith
received the Tufts Distinguished Scholarship Award, which recognized
in particular his two most recent books on American foreign policy,
America’s Mission and Foreign Attachments. Not only is the
faculty in this Department accomplished, but so are its students.
The Department is particularly proud of two recent undergraduates,
Brett Yellen and Carine Lai, who in consecutive years (2001 and
2002), won a competition sponsored by Pi Sigma Alpha, the
National Political Science Honor Society. Brett and Carine were
recognized for having written one of the three best undergraduate
papers in the country.
More detailed information on completed and ongoing research can be
found on the individual faculty web pages on this site. These pages
should provide some sense of the diversity of topics and themes we are
working with.
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