Spring Quarter 2014

From the Chair

As we near the end of another academic year, we are reminded how the end of a year often marks transitions of one kind or another. This newsletter highlights some of these along with features about our department's history, the Washington Center D.C. internship program, our highly successful political theory graduate program, and a staff spotlight of Susanne Recordon our Graduate Program Assistant.
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The Washington Center: A 37-Year Internship Partnership

UW students meet with Rep. Jim McDermott - courtesy of The Washington Center

In the 1970’s William Burke was a program director at the University of Massachusetts but he had a grander vision: to create a Washington, D.C., internship program that would connect students to internships and provide them with housing and academic credit at their home institution. He founded a non-profit, The Washington Center (TWC), to provide that service to universities throughout the world. In 1977 the University of Washington Political Science Department became a partner to TWC. Since then, hundreds of UW students from majors across the campus have ventured to the nation’s capital, but as the seat of U.S. political power it holds a special attraction for Political Science students.
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Political Theory at the University of Washington

Machiavelli -- 16th Century Observer of Political Ethics

What is justice? Why have government? What makes a good life? Political theory is the field of big questions, the part of political science that keeps us debating the fundamentals of ethics, politics, and society, that keeps us in touch with traditions of moral reflection extending from Plato’s academy to Machiavelli’s Florentine Republic to Locke’s defenses of toleration and the right to revolution. Made up of three core faculty members, the political theory subfield at the University of Washington is flourishing. Its faculty are internationally known and its Ph.D. students are unusually productive, resulting in a sterling record of graduate placement in a tight job market.
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Political Science:  An Inauspicious Beginning

University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, PH Coll 563 - J. Allen Smith

The excellence of today’s Department of Political Science may not have been foretold by our inauspicious beginning when J. Allen Smith—the namesake of Smith Hall on campus—came to the UW as the Professor of Political Economy in 1897.  By 1911 the Department of Political and Social Sciences had four members, all male. An assistant professor of economics was added two years later for the lofty sum of $1,500 per year.  A then recent Ph.D. of the department, the first female hire, was also named a temporary instructor.
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Faculty Spotlight - George Lovell

Professor George Lovell teaches American politics and law.  After earning his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, he taught at the University of Maryland and College of William and Mary before coming to University of Washington in 2001. 
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