Philip Klinkner
James S. Sherman Professor of Government
Philip Klinkner is an expert on American politics, including parties and elections, race relations, Congress and the presidency. He is the former director of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. Klinkner has written extensively on a variety of topics related to American politics. His books include The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956-1993 and Midterm: The 1994 Elections in Perspective. His book The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (with Rogers Smith) received the 2000 Horace Mann Bond Book Award from Harvard University’s Afro-American Studies Department and W.E.B DuBois Institute. He received his doctorate from Yale University.
Recent Courses Taught
Political Parties and Elections
Political Oratory
Congress & Legislative Politics
American Political Development
American Political Process
Distinctions
- Winner, Horace Mann Bond Book Award from the Harvard Afro-American Studies Department for The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America, 2000
- Semi-finalist, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for The Unsteady March, 2000
- "Best of the Best" university press books by the American Library Association for The Unsteady March, 1999
- Emerging Scholar Award from the Political Organizations and Parties Section of the American Political Science Association, 1995
- Casassa Chair of Ethics and Social Values, Loyola Marymount University, 1993-94
- Yale University Prize Teaching Fellowship, 1988-89
- Phi Beta Kappa, Lake Forest College, 1985
- Phi Beta Kappa Senior Thesis Award, 1985
Selected Publications
- The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 (with Rogers Smith, Yale University).
- Midterm: The 1994 Elections in Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996 (editor).
- The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956-1993. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
- The American Heritage History of the Bill of Rights: The First Amendment. Foreword by Warren E. Burger. New York: American Heritage, 1991.
- “Challenging History: Barack Obama & American Racial Politics.” Daedalus 140 (spring 2011): 121-135. (With Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King).
- “LBJ’s Revenge: The 2008 Election and the Rise of the Great Society Coalition,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 6 (winter 2009). (With Thomas Schaller). [http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol6/iss4/art9/]
- “Measuring the Difference Between White Voting and Polling on Interracial Marriage,” DuBois Review: Social Science Research on Race 3 (fall 2006). (With Micah Altman).
- “A Regional Analysis of the 2006 Midterms,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 4 (Winter 2006). (With Thomas Schaller). [http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol4/iss3/art9]
- “Mr. Bush’s War: Foreign Policy in the 2004 Election,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36 (June 2006): 281-296.
- “Democratic Party Ideology in the 1990s: New Democrats or Modern Republicans?,” in John K. White and John C. Green, eds., The Politics of Ideas, 2nd Edition. SUNY Press, 2001.
- “The Unsteady March Toward Racial Equality,” in Christopher Foreman, ed., The African American Predicament. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 1999. (With Rogers Smith, Yale University).
- “Bill Clinton and the Politics of the New Liberalism,” in Adolph Reed, Jr., ed., Without Justice For All: The “New Liberalism” and the Assault on Equality. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999.
- “The Election and Governance of John Daniels as Mayor of New Haven and the Failure of the Deracialization Hypothesis,” in Huey L. Perry, ed., Race, Politics, and Governance in the United States. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. (With Mary Summers)
- “Court and Country in American Politics: The Democratic Party and the 1994 Election,” in Philip A. Klinkner, ed., Midterm: The 1994 Elections in Perspective. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.
College Service
Chair, Department of Government, 2013-present
Associate Dean of Students, 2005-08
Director, Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center, 1998-2001
Appointed to the Faculty
1995Educational Background
Ph.D., Yale University
M.Phil., Yale University
M.A., Yale University
B.A., Lake Forest College
