Is political science positioned to embrace and incorporate the changing demographics, increasing multicultural diversity, and ever-growing disparities in the concentration of wealth present in many nation-states? Can political science do so within its research, teaching, and professional development? These two questions were the focus of the work of the Task Force on Political Science in the 21st Century.
To answer these questions, the Task Force assessed the practice of political science to determine whether it is living up to its full potential as a scholarly discipline to enrich the discourse, broaden the understanding, and model the behavior necessary to build strong nation-states in a rapidly changing world where population shifts and related issues regarding race, ethnicity, immigration, and equal opportunity structure some of the most significant conflicts affecting politics and policymaking.
The report concludes that political science, the discipline devoted to the study and teaching of power and its consequences, has the capacity to build more inclusive scholarship, approaches to teaching, and paths to professional development if it takes an honest and transparent look at itself. Specific recommendations are made to guide the discipline and profession to make progress along each of these dimensions of scholarly activity.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1037020. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Task Force Leadership
- Dianne Pinderhughes, APSA President (2007-2008), University of Notre Dame
- Luis R. Fraga, Co-chair, University of Washington
- Terri Givens, Co-chair, University of Texas at Austin
Task Force Members
- Manny Avalos, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
- David Covin, Cal State University, Sacramento
- Lisa Garcia Bedolla, University of California, Berkeley
- Francis Hagopian, University of Notre Dame
- Juan Carlos Huerta, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
- Vincent Hutchings, University of Michigan
- Michael Jones-Correa, Cornell University
- Taeku Lee, University of California, Berkeley
- Mark Sawyer, University California at Los Angeles
- Sherri Wallace, University of Louisville
- Fae Korsmo, National Science Foundation, Federal Liaison