Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Political Science

Tom Foley
Spring 2024

Ask the Authors: John Pierce and Kenton Bird, authors of Tom  Foley: The Man in the Middle

John Pierce and R. Kenton Bird were fellows in the same program nearly 20 years apart.

Pierce served as an American Political Science Congressional Fellow from 1970 to 1971, working part of that time in Tom Foley’s congressional office. Bird was a fellow from 1988 to 1989. Ten years later, he wrote his WSU dissertation on Foley’s congressional career. Pierce, chair of the Department of Political Science for eight years and dean of the College of Liberal Arts for eleven years, was on the committee for his doctoral degree. They spent nearly eight years working on their 2023 biography of Foley, which was … » More …

Caroline Heldman
Fall 2018

Ask Caroline Heldman ’93

 

A leading voice on sexual harassment, Caroline Heldman ’93 has had a busy year. She coauthored the 2018 book Sex and Gender in the 2016 Presidential Election, and the 2017 book Women, Power, and Politics: The Fight for Gender Equality in the United States. And the associate professor of politics—who specializes in the presidency, media, gender, and race at Occidental College in Los Angeles—frequently appears in documentaries and on news programs to speak about the #MeToo movement and harassment—partly because of her own experience.

Heldman, who had been a regular guest of host Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor, alleged in 2017 that … » More …

Fall 2018

Videos and more from Caroline Heldman

Caroline Heldman ’93 appears in several documentaries, writes, and presents on media and gender. She has emerged as a strong voice about the #MeToo movement and harassment, partly because of her own experience. Watch parts of documentaries and learn more about Heldman’s work below. You can also read about her in “Ask Caroline Heldman,” Fall 2018.

 

Miss Representation, a 2011 documentary

 

 

The Mask You Live In, 2015

 

Books

Sex and Gender in the 2016 Presidential Election, 2018

The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement: Internet Activism for Social Justice, 2018, … » More …

Privacy, Surveillance, and the New Media You cover
Fall 2017

Privacy, Surveillance, and the New Media You

Privacy, Surveillance, and the New Media You cover

Edward Lee Lamoureux ’80 MA Speech Comm.

Peter Lang: 2017

 

You open your browser to your favorite news site, and there on top is an ad for Cougar logo socks. “Wait a minute,” you might ask yourself. “How did they know I just looked at a tweet about Coug socks?” Or you might not even think about it.

That slightly creepy sensation of losing one’s privacy, and … » More …

Iphone image
Fall 2016

Get out the tweet

Social media’s effect on political participation and civility

In the nonstop flow of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, it’s hard to avoid comments and news about politics, especially in a presidential election year. Many worry the geyser of political rhetoric and uncivil comments might discourage some from participating.

That’s not always the case, says Porismita Borah, an assistant professor in the Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University since 2012. As a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin and at WSU, she researches emerging technology and how it affects politics. She coauthored a study in 2008 that found young people became … » More …

Just Mercy
Spring 2016

Just Mercy

Dozens of witnesses, including a police officer, saw Walter McMillian at a church fish fry when a young woman was killed in nearby Monroeville, Alabama in 1986.

Police later arrested the self-employed African-American tree trimmer anyway. A nearly all-white jury convicted him and a judge sent him to death row. That’s where Bryan Stevenson, a Harvard-educated lawyer, met McMillian.

Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, battled a hostile criminal justice system to uncover improperly concealed evidence that led to McMillian’s exoneration in 1993.

But the frightening way McMillian was so quickly condemned raises broader questions about America’s criminal justice system, which incarcerates more … » More …