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State of the Discipline in the Era of Democratic Discontent

Thu, August 30, 8:00am to 5:30pm, Hynes, 208

Session Submission Type: Mini-conference

Session Description

Connecting the Dots: From the APSA Sexual Harassment Survey to Studying Gender (8:00 - 9:30am)
Gender Disparities Throughout Political Science (10:00 - 11:30am)
Democratic Implications of a Mostly White Discipline: Recruitment and Hiring (12:00 - 1:30pm)
Democratic Implications of a Mostly White Discipline: Teaching and Research (2:00 - 3:30pm)
Studying American Muslims While Muslim: Challenges and Opportunities (4:00 - 5:30pm)


Connecting the Dots: From the APSA Sexual Harassment Survey to Studying Gender

What can political science learn from the recent upsurge in attention to gender biases and sexual harassment, and what might our discipline’s theories, frameworks, and findings illuminate about the politics surrounding these and related issues? This session will explore these questions through a discussion about the multiple manifestations and implications of gender biases in politics and Political Science. To do so, panelists and participants will try to "connect the dots" between the gender biases and sexual harassment in and outside of political science and other problematic issues, particularly (1) problems like gendered patterns of workplace bullying and professional intimidation; (2) systematic discounting of and devaluing of research on gender, sexuality, and politics; (3) biases and inequities associated with hiring, teaching evaluations, service loads, and tenure and promotion; and (4) related and often intersecting forms of harassment, especially but not only those related to race and sexuality.

Janelle Wong, (Chair)
Dara Z. Strolovitch, Princeton University (Presenter)
Nadia E. Brown, Purdue University (Presenter)
Lisa Garcia Bedolla, University of California, Berkeley (Presenter)

Gender Disparities Throughout Political Science

Consistent with the times and our investigations of gender gaps in political activity and representation, Political Science is undergoing a thorough investigation into disparities between men and women and the reasons for them. This panel pushes that agenda forward on a wide range of dimensions: methodological training and choices; gender representation on IR and graduate syllabi; social media treatment of the work of men and women authors; and the link between mentorship and psychological dispositions on engagement with the publication pipeline. Together, this empirically diverse panel presents a diverse and troubling portrait of the discipline, showing gender disparities from graduate training to professorship, from how research is approached, to how it is disseminated, and from how it is treated by peers in social media to how or whether it is taught.

Amanda Friesen, IUPUI (Chair)
Yanna Krupnikov, Stony Brook University (Discussant)


Do Altmetrics Amplify or Improve the Gender Gap in Scholarly Impact?
Michelle L. Dion, McMaster University (Author)
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, University of Iowa (Author)
Jane Lawrence Sumner, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (Author)


Selecting in or Selection out? Gender gaps and political methodology in Europe
Malu A. C. Gatto, University of Zurich (Author)
Anita R. Gohdes, University of Zurich (Author)
Denise Traber, University of Zurich (Author)
Mariken van der Velden, University of Zurich (Author)


Gender Bias in IR Graduate Education? New evidence from syllabi
Jeff Colgan, Brown University (Author)



How Submission Practices Affect Publication Patterns in Political Science
Paul A. Djupe, Denison University (Author)
Amy Erica Smith, Iowa State University (Author)
Anand Edward Sokhey, University of Colorado, Boulder (Author)



I. Democratic implications of a mostly white discipline: Recruitment and Hiring

Does the pervasive whiteness in Political Science matter for democracy? It has been six years since APSA released its “Report of the Task Force on Political Science in the 21st Century,” which found that the increase in the number of women and scholars of color since 1980 “has been at a very slow pace, especially among faculty of color.” There can be no more pressing time to discuss this troubling state of affairs than the present political moment. The 2016 election turned on the discontent of a largely white set of voters, strongly supportive of Trump's agenda to “Make America Great Again.” The same election mobilized large numbers of Trump critics and opponents, who see the slogan’s implicit endorsement of white privilege and supremacy as a threat to American democracy. Rather than debate these issues in domains outside the academy, this series of roundtables focuses on how they play out within the discipline. A diverse group of panelists will discuss the ways in which whiteness shapes Political Science and political scientists and the broader implications such practices have for democracy more generally. The first roundtable examines issues of hiring and recruitment, one of the main mechanisms for maintaining the status quo. The second examines how whiteness structures how and what scholars research and teach—from the kinds of questions we ask to the ways we frame our findings.


Mary Hawkesworth (Chair)
Robin L. Turner (Chair)
Paula D. McClain, Duke University (Presenter)
Mala Htun, University of New Mexico (Presenter)
Lisa Garcia Bedolla, University of California, Berkeley (Presenter)
Errol A. Henderson, Pennsylvania State University (Presenter)
Stephanie McNulty, Franklin and Marshall College (Presenter)
Jane Y. Junn, University of Southern California (Presenter)


II. Democratic implications of a mostly white discipline: Teaching and Research


Does the pervasive whiteness in Political Science matter for democracy? It has been six years since APSA released its “Report of the Task Force on Political Science in the 21st Century,” which found that the increase in the number of women and scholars of color since 1980 “has been at a very slow pace, especially among faculty of color.” There can be no more pressing time to discuss this troubling state of affairs than the present political moment. The 2016 election turned on the discontent of a largely white set of voters, strongly supportive of Trump's agenda to “Make America Great Again.” The same election mobilized large numbers of Trump critics and opponents, who see the slogan’s implicit endorsement of white privilege and supremacy as a threat to American democracy. Rather than debate these issues in domains outside the academy, this series of roundtables focuses on how they play out within the discipline. A diverse group of panelists will discuss the ways in which whiteness shapes Political Science and political scientists and the broader implications such practices have for democracy more generally. The first roundtable examines issues of hiring and recruitment, one of the main mechanisms for maintaining the status quo. The second examines how whiteness structures how and what scholars research and teach—from the kinds of questions we ask to the ways we frame our findings.

Stephanie McNulty (Chair)
Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers University (Presenter)
Robin L. Turner, Butler University (Presenter)
Kennan Ferguson,University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (Presenter)
Ido Oren, University of Florida (Presenter)
Julia S. Jordan-Zachery,Providence College (Presenter)
Erin Tolley, University of Toronto (Presenter)



Studying American Muslims While Muslim: Challenges and Opportunities


American Muslims have garnered increasing amounts of public and scholarly attention since 9/11. The 2016 presidential campaign has seen them situated at the forefront of the national discourse, with the then-candidate Trump proposed a ban on Muslims from entering the country, a national database of all Muslims in the United States, and the wholesale surveillance of mosques.

What is often lacking from much of these conversations are American Muslims themselves. Muslim voices continue to be marginalized or altogether ignored. Pundits and policymakers alike speak about the community as homogenous with predictable political behavior, with little evidence or representative Muslim voices to even be included. Muslims and Islam are spoken of and about by non-Muslims, and most often than not, with little to no evidence to support points raised and argued for.

What are the opportunities and the challenges of studying the Muslim American community while being Muslim?

How do we bridge the dilemma of seeking to highlight the attitudes and behaviors that make American Muslims distinctive and worthy of analysis, while aiming to undermine destructive generalizations of this community’s exceptionalism? Does it make sense to speak of Muslims as a religious-ethnic group? A racialized group? only a religious group?

This roundtable offers answers and reflections of Muslim American scholars who have extensively studied and researched the American Muslim community from multiple angles.

Karam Dana, University of Washington (Chair)
Dalia Fikry Fahmy, Long Island University, Brooklyn (Presenter)
Nazita Lajevardi, UCSD (Presenter)
Hajer Al-Faham, University of Pennsylvania (Presenter)
Kassra AR Oskooii, University of Delaware (Presenter)
Youssef Chouhoud, University of Southern California (Presenter)

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