News

Prompted by recent killings and the social upheaval arising in their aftermath, our nation has awakened to the brutality of institutional racism and the violence to human dignity it has wrought in communities of color, now and throughout America’s history. Many who had previously failed to recognize and understand the structures of racism are now seeking to educate themselves.…

Read More about New initiative will tackle racism’s core concepts

ND VOTES RELEASES GENERAL ELECTION VOTER GUIDE Notre Dame, Indiana: ND Votes, a student-lead nonpartisan voter education and mobilization campaign at the University of Notre Dame, announces the launch of the ND Votes General Election Voter Guide online to ensure that all students have the opportunity and resources to make their voices heard at the ballot box.…

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University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced today the University has withdrawn as the host site for the first of the 2020 presidential debates, scheduled for Sept. 29.

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Reporters across the country regularly reach out to Rooney Center faculty, highlighting their research and seeking their expertise on stories about all aspects of American politics. In the 2019–20 academic year, our faculty were quoted by the Washington Post, Associated Press, New York Times, Newsweek, and more.

Read More about Rooney Center faculty in the news 2019–20

As Notre Dame’s laboratories went into hibernation in March, many researchers from various fields — chemistry, engineering, political science, psychology, education — looked for ways to pivot their own work toward furthering knowledge into how COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, works, how it’s transmitted, and how our country and world can cope with the unexpected pandemic crisis. They decided to jump into the research at different times, but for the same reason: They knew they could help. The way states respond to the pandemic — rather than the population epidemiology — interested Jeff Harden, the Andrew J. McKenna Family Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a faculty fellow in the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy.

Read More about Understand and Fight: Notre Dame researchers and the COVID-19 pandemic

Graduate student Jessala Grijalva has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF). Nationwide, just 11 political science graduate students were awarded these highly-competitive fellowships in 2020. The NSF-GRF provides a generous stipend and tuition support over a three year period, permitting Grijalva to focus intently on her research and writing. …

Read More about Graduate student Jessala Grijalva awarded highly competitive NSF fellowship

Christina Wolbrecht, political scientist and author of A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage, discussed how politicians and the media have attempted to understand and define women as voters since the passage of the 19th Amendment. She also analyzed the accuracy of assumptions about women voters in the 2016 election - the first to feature a female presidential candidate from a major party. The Boston Athenaeum hosted the event recently aired on C-SPAN. View it here…

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Political scientist professors Christina Wolbrecht and J. Kevin Corder studied the history of women's voting patterns in their new book A Century of Votes for Women, and in this Q&A, they discuss what we need to understand about women voters for the 2020 elections, how having a female presidential candidate could affect voting patterns and the possible significance of having a woman on the ballot.…

Read More about Rooney Center director Christina Wolbrecht discusses her new book in Newsweek Magazine

Frank Baumgartner, Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, spoke recently at Notre Dame about the unusual imbalance of death penalties across localities in the United States. His talk was sponsored by the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, and co-sponsored by the Klau Center.…

Read More about Death penalty disparities examined

University of Notre Dame senior Prathm Juneja has been named to the United States Rhodes Scholar Class of 2020. Juneja, of Edison, New Jersey, is Notre Dame’s 20th Rhodes Scholar and the 14th from the College of Arts and Letters — including four in the past six years — and will commence his studies in Oxford in October.

Read More about Political science major Prathm Juneja named Rhodes Scholar

With a record number of women running for the Democratic nomination, and Elizabeth Warren leading in some polls, some Democrats have wondered whether nominating a woman in 2020 will mean it is 2016 all over again. Clinton’s loss embittered many women — young women in particular. It was not just that Clinton lost, it was who she lost to. And it was not just that they were frustrated with losing an election; many young women began to question American democracy itself. This is especially troubling at a time when liberal democracy is being questioned…

Read More about How women candidates are making girls feel better about politics

On Thursday, November 7, the Klau Center and the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy welcomed Jennifer Thompson to Notre Dame Law School. Thompson, founder and director of the Healing Justice Project, recalled her experience at the center of a wrongful conviction case, and its devastating aftermath.…

Read More about Jennifer Thompson: The Concentric Circles of Harm

The numbers of student voters at the University of Notre Dame rose nearly 20 percentage points in last year’s midterm elections, according to the new 2014 and 2018 Campus Report from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE). At Notre Dame, 37.1 percent of students voted in the 2018 midterms, compared to 17.3 percent in the 2014 elections, following a national trend. Undergraduate and graduate students voted at nearly equal rates in 2014, at 15.2 percent and 16.3 percent respectively, and both jumped significantly in 2018 to 32.9 percent and 33.1 percent respectively.

Read More about Rooney Center Helps Encourage Student Voting

Notre Dame political scientist Jeff Harden is part of a multidisciplinary research team awarded a $1 million National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator grant to create a hub that will make it easier to access and analyze data from states on public policy and economic and social outcomes.

Read More about NSF-funded team working to make data from states more accessible and easier to analyze

LEO was honored to cohost, with The Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, an event for University of Notre Dame students featuring Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. The event, “Evidence and Policymaking in the Age of Big Data,” was held on September 13 on the Notre Dame campus. Ryan, who serves on LEO’s advisory board and is a Professor of the Practice at Notre Dame this academic year, spoke about how research and evidence-based policy can have a meaningful impact on poverty.

Read More about Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan speaks about evidence-based anti-poverty policy

The Presidential Team Irish Award program recognizes staff teams that exemplify the University’s Core Values of integrity, accountability, teamwork, leadership in mission and leadership in excellence. A select number of staff teams receive the award each year as a recognition of significant accomplishments, collaborations or initiatives where they demonstrated Core Values. At each home football game, before 80,000 football fans, one of the Team Irish Award winning teams take the field, during a television timeout, to receive the award. Click for information on the Presidential Team Irish Award.…

Read More about The Building Bridges Mentoring Program receives the Presidential Team Irish Award

Check out the Rooney Center 2018-2019 Year in Review…

Read More about Rooney Center 2018-2019 Year in Review

Latinos make up half of American Border Patrol agents. But it's not self-hatred driving them to work for agencies deporting their communities.

Read More about Assistant Professor David Cortez recently wrote an opinion piece for USA Today: "I asked Latinos why they joined immigration law enforcement. Now I'm urging them to leave."