Inspired by the thoughtfulness and ingenuity of the Federalist Papers, the CCCG invited Notre Dame students of all years, backgrounds, and academic programs to submit published articles or essays discussing a topic surrounding politics, philosophy, law, economics, culture, or religion that refine and enlarge the public’s views. We are deeply grateful to all who submitted a piece for consideration.

The competition included two categories of publication: campus publications and local, national, and international media outlets. Each winner receives a prize of $250, and after a careful selection process, the CCCG has selected two winners.

In the campus publication category, the winner is Liam Kelly '26 for his article "Notre Dame Must Choose Courage," published in The Observer on February 13, 2026. Kelly’s piece discusses Notre Dame’s unique responsibility to root itself in its Catholic tradition in an increasingly secular world. He specifically references the hiring of Professor Susan Ostermann, critiquing the university’s choice of appointing her head of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. This example serves as one instance as Kelly broadens his message into a call to action for the University to courageously continue to be a beacon of Catholicism.

“What is needed is courage, a resolution to stand firm in its identity both on campus and beyond, come what may. Ultimately, there can be no higher calling for a University as storied as Notre Dame than fulfilling its Catholic mission in the fullest sense.” - Liam Kelly

For the local, national, and international media outlet category, the winner is Maria Eduarda Grill '28 for her piece “Outrage Over Accuracy: What the Los Angeles Protests Teach About Democracy Online,” published by The Fulcrum on September 24, 2025. Grill compares Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa’s warning on atomic bombs to the modern issue of rampant digital misinformation that impairs democracy. Using the 2025 Los Angeles protests as an example, Grill sheds light on the dangers of false media, stating “truth had to fight against algorithms designed to reward virality and profit, rather than accuracy.” Grill gives examples of solutions enacted in the European Union and possible solutions that could be implemented in the United States.

“Americans are not powerless in the face of disinformation.” - Maria Eduarda Grill

The CCCG also recognizes Honorable Mentions in the two categories, acknowledging the students’ exceptional work and brilliant insights:

In the campus publications category, the CCCG recognizes Abby Strelow '28 for her insightful article “Notre Dame Doesn’t Do Enough for LGBTQ Students,” published by The Irish Rover on February 26, 2026. Strelow commends Notre Dame Campus Ministry in their efforts to facilitate faith-based group events, such as Masses and retreats for LGBTQ students, and emphasizes the necessity for further opportunities for support “for an authentically Catholic approach to sexuality and gender.”

For local, national, and international media publications, the CCCG recognizes two outstanding individuals.

Ella Yates '27 receives an Honorable Mention for her column “Rebuilding Virtue: We Need an Architecture Revival,” published by Religion and Liberty Online on July 16, 2025. Yates calls for humanity to reembrace our roots of celebrating beauty to uphold the dignity and goodness we receive from God. Yates claims this can occur through the beauty of architecture “because they lift our souls into contemplation of the divine source of creation.”

The CCCG also recognizes Nia Maria '28 for her comprehensive essay “Louisiana v. Callais and the Fate of Race-Conscious Representation,” published in the Midwestern Citizen on February 17, 2026. Maria analyzes the complexities of Louisiana v. Callias, a Supreme Court case occurring after legislators redrew district maps in Louisiana based on race in 2024. Maria states the map provides a modern test: “It invites the question whether a system that prohibits even the conscious recognition of race can ever dismantle racial hierarchies built through centuries of exclusion.”

Congratulations to all winners and honorable mentions! We invite you to read their excellent pieces above, and to be on the lookout for the call for next year’s Publius Prize, which will commence in the spring of 2027.

Stay up to date with all of the CCCG’s offerings this coming year by subscribing to our email list.

Originally published by Claire Glen at constudies.nd.edu on June 04, 2026.

Through a competitive application process, we were pleased to award funding to the following CCCG-affiliated students this summer:

• Natalia Yepez Frias (Political Theory Doctoral Student), Matthew Arildsen (Political Theory and Constitutional Studies Doctoral Student), Kody Richards (Constitutional Studies Doctoral Student), and Luke Thompson (Notre Dame Law School and Constitutional Studies J.D.-Ph.D. Student) are participating in Academia Tocqueville, a seminar in Paris, France exploring French culture and political thought.

• Zach Coddington (Constitutional Studies Doctoral Student) is taking an intensive French language course at the Institut de Touraine in Tours, France.

• Scarlett Powell ‘28 (Tocqueville Fellow) is interning for District Court Judge Anna Madeja in Grudziadz, Poland.

• Kevin Bizily ‘28 (Tocqueville Fellow, Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for Judge Amul Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Covington, KY.

• Zachari Taylor ‘28 (Constitutional Studies Minor, Student Intern) is interning for Novel DC, a strategy and lobbying firm in Washington, DC.

• Ryan Walsh ‘27 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for Representative Juan Vargas (CA-51) in Washington, DC.

• Benjamin O’Brien ‘29 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for Representative Marlin Stutzman (IN-03) in Washington, DC.

• Donal Connaughton ‘27 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for Representative Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11) in Washington, DC.

• Michael Fishburne ‘28 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for Representative Pat Fallon (TX-04) in Washington, DC.

• Tucker Leck ‘29 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for Senator Roger Marshall (KS) in Washington, DC.

• Sean Utrie ‘28 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for Senator Ron Johnson (WI) in Washington, DC.

• Chloe Garner ‘28 (Notre Dame Law School Student) is interning for the Ohio Justice and Policy Center in Cincinnati, OH.

• Kerry Jiang ‘28 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning for the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington, DC.

• Stephanie Luiz ‘28 (Notre Dame Law School Student) is interning for Napa Legal Institute in Boston, MA and for Professor Rick Garnett at Notre Dame Law School.

• John Vranas ‘27 (Constitutional Studies Minor) is interning at the White House within the Office of Presidential correspondence in Washington, DC.

• Jack Krieger ‘28 (Tocqueville Fellow, Constitutional Studies Minor) is taking a research trip to study the relationship between church architecture and the English Reformation across England, Scotland, and Ireland.

We will be posting highlights from these students’ internship experiences throughout the summer on the center’s Instagram account. Follow us to get updates!

To learn more about our student funding opportunities and the application process, visit our website.

Originally published by Kevin Bizily at constudies.nd.edu on May 26, 2026.

In his four years at the University of Notre Dame, Cade Czarnecki ’26 has majored in political science and economics, studied for a semester each in Washington, D.C., and Greece, served as president of the multi-partisan BridgeND club, earned a spot as an inaugural undergraduate fellow with the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative, and worked as a research operations analyst for the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO).

And if that weren’t enough, he’s also fast. Czarnecki won the 2026 Holy Half Marathon with a time of 1:16:30.

“Having the latitude to do so much in a short period of time while still feeling that I am committing myself to these efforts is something uniquely Notre Dame,” Czarnecki said.

The graduating senior from Cincinnati says his College of Arts & Letters education has given him the space and support to pursue all of these passions and more, both in and outside of the classroom.

As an admissions tour guide, Czarnecki said prospective students and families often ask how he manages to balance so many endeavors.

“I credit Arts and Letters with giving me the flexibility within the official program of study to really pursue the things I care about,” he said. “One of the cool things about Notre Dame, and Arts and Letters specifically, is how many students do so many things.”

Just four years ago, Czarnecki was on the other side of a campus tour as an admitted student. Community and student club involvement ended up being the deciding factor in Czarnecki choosing Notre Dame, and it became a hallmark of his experience.

As a freshman, Czarnecki joined BridgeND, a chapter of a national student-led organization, which has been his most significant extracurricular activity. He served as president in his junior year and then as senior advisor.

“The whole point of the club is to foster political conversation across party lines,” he said. “To bring students of different affiliations to a room, to sit down together, and to afford legitimacy to the beliefs of their peers through meaningful conversations.”

The club has about 30 active members and hosts campus-wide events, such as a debate between College Democrats and College Republicans. Czarnecki has also served in student government all four years, spending his later years working in sustainability.

And as a sophomore, Czarnecki participated in the Notre Dame Washington Program, where he worked at the U.S. Department of Commerce, helping coordinate policy memos for the Secretary of Commerce. The following year, he spent the fall semester in Greece and was amazed by its rich historical and cultural traditions, especially as the birthplace of democracy.

His interest in politics and government stems from his upbringing in Ohio, which was a presidential swing state for most of his formative years. By the time he was on the cusp of voting age in 2020, though, his home state turned solidly red, which drove his curiosity to study political science in college.

These shifting political dynamics in Ohio and nationwide also informed Czarnecki’s senior thesis in economics, “Granting an Edge: The Employment Effects of Politically Driven Federal Dollars,” which examines how disproportionate federal government project grant spending in presidential battleground states influences employment in those places.

“It’s established in economics literature that swing states — states of more electoral importance — get disproportionately more federal project grant dollars,” he said. “And in the end, I find that a 10% increase in such discretionary funding, given specifically to states because of their electoral significance, results in about a 7% increase in employment.”

The project, Czarnecki said, tied together his economics and political science majors, each of which nourishes a different aspect of his academic interests.

“Political science is really what’s interesting to me; it’s the conversations I like to have. It’s the theory that’s interesting,” he said. “But it lacks a definitive tool by which to actually analyze and have these conversations. I think that’s where economics complements it nicely — it helps understand the world around you, it is a way of quantifying what you observe, of bringing some kind of metric or comparison into those conversations.”

Czarnecki received funding from the University’s Democracy Initiative for his thesis and was able to take advantage of his time last summer while working with LEO to get a head start on the project, by meeting periodically with his thesis advisor, economics professor and LEO co-founder James Sullivan.

As a research operations analyst with LEO, Czarnecki conducted statistical analyses across several projects, ranging from evaluating the impact of a girls’ empowerment initiative in Indianapolis public schools to studying the effects of different support methods at the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Northern Indiana Corridor.

Czarnecki was also a part of the inaugural cohort of Democracy Fellows, during which he workshopped research ideas with peers during a weekly class and had the opportunity to meet with former Department of Justice prosecutors.

After graduation, Czarnecki will start his career as an economic consulting analyst at Chicago-based Compass Lexecon, the leading competition and antitrust economic consulting firm.

“Economic consulting is very different than your typical consulting that a lot of business students go into,” he said. “It’s driven by litigation.”

For instance, if two companies try to merge, the government can sue them, alleging anti-competitive or monopolistic practices or arguing that the merger would raise prices on consumers or give the merged entity an outsized market share. In that case, attorneys hire economic consultants to help build the quantitative evidence for their case.

“The role I’m going to be in is one where we’re doing economic modeling to show, in the world in which these two companies merge, do prices in fact go up for consumers? And so we’ll actually be taking the data, building models, and creating quantitative evidence for these lawsuits,” he said.

Czarnecki said he eventually wants to continue this sort of work as an attorney specializing in mergers and acquisitions and competition law. But before law school, his Notre Dame experience inspired him to first follow his passions.

“I came into college thinking I would probably go straight through undergrad and go to law school immediately after,” he said. “And at some point, it became clear to me that I have these other interests that Notre Dame has allowed me to explore and encouraged me to dig into.”

Originally published by Jack Rooney at al.nd.edu on May 13, 2026.

On April 11th, the Institute for Latino Studies honored the career and legacy of Dr. Luis Fraga with a day-long retirement symposium. Affectionately called “Fraga Fest,” the event brought together current and former students, colleagues, family, alumni and friends to celebrate one of the most beloved professors of Latino Studies at Notre Dame. The focus on scholarship, mentorship, and public service culminated with keynote remarks from U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, who was introduced by three ILS students who previously interned in his congressional office. Castro described Fraga's lasting influence, calling him the most influential professor in his education and thanking him for decades of mentorship and support.

After 44 years as a professor of political science at Notre Dame in the mid-1980s, Stanford University for 16 years, University of Washington, and concluding his career back at Notre Dame as Director of ILS from 2016-2025, the symposium featured two panels highlighting both his local and national impact.

ILS director Jason Ruiz and newly appointed Chair of the ILS Advisory Board Lupe Eichelberger, welcomed an audience of over 110 members impacted by Fraga’s teaching and research. University Provost John McGreevy, was instrumental in recruiting Professor Fraga, and shared stories about his development of young leaders and scholars at Notre Dame.

Dozens of former students from Stanford University also attended. Among those who returned to honor Professor Luis Fraga was Julián Castro, CEO of the Latino Community Foundation and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Obama Administration. Reading from his book An Unlikely Journey: Waking Up From My American Dream, Castro reflected on meeting Fraga in the classroom as well as the profound influence Fraga had on both him and his twin brother Joaquin Castro’s careers in politics and public service.

Fraga’s son, Bernard Fraga, the Ann and Michael Hanking Distinguished Professor of Political Science and director of the Program in Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies at Emory University, helped transition into the symposium’s programming by highlighting some of his father’s efforts to highlight Latino voters and build the field of Latino studies. He explained the significance of Notre Dame’s commitment to Latino Studies, and US Latino communities.

“Building Latino Studies at Notre Dame,” was a panel moderated by Jason Ruiz, featuring Notre Dame Professors Dianne Pinderhughes, Geoffrey Layman, Alex E. Chávez, Marisel Moreno. Kiku Huckle from California Lutheran University also contributed. The discussion was followed by a series of personal tributes from audience members, expressing gratitude for Fraga’s impact on their lives and in their decisions to become leaders in their career fields and communities.

Many more tributes took place during lunch, beginning with a special blessing delivered by Father Joseph Corpora C.S.C, Associate Director of the Transformative Leaders Program and longtime friend of Luis Fraga.

Fr. Jim Fenstermaker C.S.C., pastor of Holy Cross Parish in South Bend, presented Dr. Fraga with a plaque that will be placed in a classroom named in his honor at Holy Cross School. The dedication is a recognition of Fraga’s role in helping establish the school’s Spanish-English two-way immersion Catholic program in 2017.

During his tenure as director of the Institute for Latino Studies, Dr. Fraga played a key role in creating the Latino Studies Scholars Program– the institute’s merit-based, leadership scholarship. LSSP scholars Grecia Alcantar ‘26 and Aliyah Cerda ‘27 presented a video featuring current scholars and alumni reflecting on their enriched student experience at our lady’s university.

Top scholars from across the country, including Rodney E. Hero, Valerie J. Martinez-Ebers, Gary M. Segura, Michael Jones Correa, and John Garcia, and was moderated by Professor of Political Science and ILS Faculty Fellow Ricardo Ramirez.

Reflecting on a career spanning more than 40 years, Professor Fraga took the stage to conclude the celebration. He spoke about his commitment to being a “transformational leader,” emphasizing the importance of not only achieving individual success but also expanding opportunities for others and working to transform systems that create barriers.

He tearfully expressed deep gratitude to everyone present in the room for the celebration saying, “I’ve had a life of incredible privilege and opportunity that I will cherish for the rest of my life, and I know I owe my success to many of you in this room. His words were met with a standing ovation.

Rep. Castro concluded his visit by speaking to a group of merit scholars in the Mckenna Hall auditorium.

Originally published by Institute for Latino Studies at latinostudies.nd.edu on May 13, 2026.

The Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government is pleased to congratulate Helena Drake, Pre-Doctoral Research Associate, and Lauren Douglas, Office Coordinator, on their acceptance to graduate programs.

Helena Drake grew up in South Bend and came to the Center following her graduation from Princeton University in May 2025, where she earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature, specializing in French and Russian, with minors in Medieval Studies and Slavic Languages and Cultures. In her role at the Center, she has developed a deep interest in the relationship between literature and politics: how political systems shape literary expression and how literature in turn shapes political life.

At the CCCG, Drake has led a student colloquium titled "The Role of American Society and the Place of Fiction," which explores literature's role in both moral formation and the political sphere. The colloquium raised questions about "the purpose of fiction and the role of fiction when thinking about politics, " how stories form the individual moral person, and how they contribute to the broader political sphere. Drawing on readings from Shakespeare, Plato, John Steinbeck, and Flannery O'Connor, among others, the colloquium asks what fiction has done for American society in the past and what it can do in the future, treating literature as, in Drake's words, "the conscience of the nation at a certain moment."

Drake has valued both the intellectual environment of the Center and the practical support it offers. With mentorship from Professor Muñoz and support in the graduate school application process, she notes that the CCCG creates an environment where people can ask questions and "come away with clarified ideas." She will pursue a Master's degree at Oxford in medieval studies and French before beginning a Ph.D. in the Department of French and Italian at Princeton in the fall of 2027.

Her advice to undergraduates reflects her own formation: she encourages students to read, difficult as that can be in an age of phones, because books "add so much to your life when you're able to engage with different ideas through literature." And, she notes, you "can always do" it; you "don't need to be in a class."

Lauren Douglas '25 graduated from Notre Dame with a B.A. in Theology and the Program of Liberal Studies (PLS), and joined the CCCG in early July as Office Coordinator. She was drawn to Notre Dame in part by its Catholic mission of educating the whole person, to "explore faith life in a different key, not just devotional, but historical and theoretical." She found an intellectual community in PLS and Theology, which provided the academic rigor she was looking for. As a student, she worked with the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and served on the board of Notre Dame Right to Life.

In her role at the CCCG, Douglas works closely with Assistant Director Anna Bradley on planning and operations for the center's programming. One of her first major responsibilities was helping to execute the Jeannie Poole O'Shaughnessy Memorial Lecture with Justice Amy Coney Barrett: a large-scale event that required significant logistical coordination and security. She also helped organize a conference in January for early tenure-track faculty from universities and civic centers across the country, focused on how to teach civic education effectively. Douglas had the opportunity to sit in on sessions and hear faculty discuss their syllabi firsthand, an experience she found both professionally enriching and genuinely interesting.

Douglas describes her role as deeply rewarding when she knows she has "worked really hard" on an event and then is able to watch it "come to life." For Douglas, it was especially rewarding to plan and host events where undergraduate students engage with featured speakers.

This fall, Douglas will begin a Ph.D. in English at Duke University, where she plans to focus on the religious poetry of the early modern period (1500–1800). Her undergraduate formation in theology, particularly her study of biblical inheritance, has become a formative thread she hopes to carry into her literary scholarship, and to integrate it into her broader field of English. She is eager to teach, motivated by a sense of gratitude toward those who have formed her. "Feeling grateful and indebted to people who have formed me," she said that she hopes to "give back to help other people in the same way I've been helped."

Her advice to undergraduates is to go to office hours. Professors are, she says, "such lovely people to talk to," and offer so much to "learn personally, professionally, and academically." More broadly, she hopes students leave Notre Dame having been "formed for difficult times by a strong sense of challenge and doing hard things" — a lesson her own time at Notre Dame instilled in her.

“One of the joys of being on a small team is that each personality makes a significant impact on the being and acting of the CCCG,” Bradley observed. “Lauren and Helena both add such vibrancy to the culture here. Working closely with them on various projects over the last year has been a real gift, and while their unique talents and contributions will be missed, we’re thrilled for them to pursue their vocations in the academy.”

Stay up to date with all of the CCCG’s offerings this coming year by subscribing to our email list.

Originally published by Jonah Tran at constudies.nd.edu on May 12, 2026.

Originally published by Kelli Brown at retirees-emeriti.nd.edu on May 07, 2026.

One day a few years ago, Jeff Harden set out to do something different — complete a research project alone.

And it hasn’t been pretty.

“It has been a very painful process,” Harden said. “It's almost been like using a lawnmower that needs to be oiled really badly.”

Although the work has been arduous, it has also been deeply validating to the Andrew J. McKenna Family College Professor of Political Science because it proved that his preferred collaborative method is, indeed, the right one.

“With solo work, you are counting on yourself to do all aspects of a paper,” he said. “I know I have the basic tools that I need to do this, but everything seems harder than it should be — it's so strange for me.”

The core of Harden’s research on American politics involves applying statistical methodology to examine how legislative institutions affect representation. And during his decade at the University of Notre Dame, he has worked collaboratively with colleagues, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students on award-winning papers, presentations, and books — combining diverse interests and approaches to answer simple yet broad questions with intricate nuances such as examining voter ID laws’ effects on legislators, politicians’ accountability post-January 6, and even Taylor Swift ticket sales.

"Beyond our collaboration, he’s very generous with his time — always willing to offer feedback and advice at any stage in the research process, and my work is stronger because of it.”

— Erin Rossiter, the Nancy Reeves Dreux Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science

“Collaborating with Jeff was a valuable experience,” said Erin Rossiter, the Nancy Reeves Dreux Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, who worked with Harden on a project examining how Swift’s “Eras Tour” concert ticket sale debacle galvanized voters to hold elected officials accountable. “Our discussions about how to clearly frame our question, build our argument, and do careful empirical work have shaped how I approach my own projects. Beyond our collaboration, he’s very generous with his time — always willing to offer feedback and advice at any stage in the research process, and my work is stronger because of it.”

In recognition of his work, Harden is the recipient of the 2026 College of Arts & Letters Research Award. The honor recognizes faculty who demonstrate significant scholarly achievement and impact, as well as leadership, innovation, and engagement with the University’s research and educational mission.

The award will be presented to Harden at the college’s spring faculty meeting at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7, in 215/216 McKenna Hall. Kasey Buckles, the Quinn and Jean Stepan Family College Professor of Economics, will receive the Graduate Student Mentorship Award at the same event.

“I don’t really see myself as a solo researcher, so this award feels like it’s recognizing a lot of people,” Harden said. “The work I’ve been doing, especially the last five years, has been exclusively collaborative, and the large majority of that with people at Notre Dame."

Tackling big questions together

Harden’s research ethos began to intertwine with his sense of community while he was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Initially interested in congressional campaigns, Harden connected with mentor Tom Carsey and other political scientists who focused more on state legislatures. He then sharpened his research focus on the relationship between elected officials and their constituents.

“Just the idea that you can study 50 legislatures comparatively instead of just one was really interesting to me,” Harden said. “And it really developed this strong allegiance to the study of state legislatures, as well as the origin of my interest in collaborative work and developing community-based research.”

Harden joined Notre Dame in 2016 and, as a concurrent professor in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, has further honed his ability to make research-based arguments about how institutions shape legislators' behavior, using empirical evidence from across the country.

“I am deeply interested in the statistical methodology that social scientists use to make the claims that they make,” he said. “I’ve always had an interest in the tools that we use and trying to make them better, and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of thinking about how we can safely make a causal claim when we, as researchers, did not fully control the data-generating process.”

Recently, he applied those tools in research that culminated in a Journal of Politics article titled “The Legislative Legacy of Voter Identification Laws,” co-authored with then-graduate student Alejandra Campos ’23, Ph.D., and Austin Bussing of Trinity University, which explored whether voter identification laws have a polarizing effect on state legislatures.

“Methodologically, this posed huge problems because the legislatures that we're trying to study are the ones who implemented the voter ID laws,” Harden said. “So part of that work involves the methodological innovation to be able to sort out the effect of voter ID laws on legislators, independent of whatever led them to implement voter ID laws in the first place.”

This dedication to methodological rigor and scholarly collaboration is a hallmark of Harden's work, and it has not gone unnoticed. It’s this innovative approach to tackling complex issues that has consistently earned him major grants and accolades in the field.

“Just the idea that you can study 50 legislatures comparatively instead of just one was really interesting to me. And it really developed this strong allegiance to the study of state legislatures, as well as the origin of my interest in collaborative work and developing community-based research."

— Jeff Harden, the Andrew J. McKenna Family College Professor in the Department of Political Science.

In 2019, he was a part of a multidisciplinary research team that won a $1 million National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator (C-Accel) grant to create a hub that made it easier to access and analyze data from states on public policy and economic and social outcomes. He’s also received multiple honors from the American Political Science Association, including the State Politics and Policy Section’s Emerging Scholar Award in 2022, the Best Published Paper Award in 2021, and the Best Conference Paper Award in 2017. His first book, Multidimensional Democracy: A Supply and Demand Theory of Representation in American Legislatures (Cambridge University Press, 2016), won the APSA’s Virginia Gray Book Award in 2017.

Harden credits his success to tight-knit relationships with fellow political scientists who study state legislatures and Notre Dame colleagues who challenge and inspire him further. Motivation for his research is often found from American politics scholars just down the hall, he said, David Campbell, the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Politics and director of the Democracy Initiative; professor and department chair Geoff Layman; professor Christina Wolbrecht; and Matthew Hall, the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional Studies and director of the Rooney Democracy Institute.

“They've really given me inspiration to frame my work in a way that tackles big questions,” Harden said. “And they’ve challenged me to think about how my work could answer huge questions about what democracy needs to be healthy — in the U.S., or even beyond.”

Simple, yet revolutionary

To address questions surrounding legislative representation, Harden and congressional legislative scholar Rachel Porter, the Notre Dame du Lac Assistant Professor of Political Science, formed the Representation and Politics in Legislatures (RPL) Lab. Part of the Rooney Democracy Institute, the research group — comprised of Harden, Porter, professor James Curry, and several postdoctoral and graduate scholars — aims to advance the study of legislative institutions, legislators, and representation in the United States and beyond.

For Harden, the establishment of the lab offered an opportunity for organic collaboration on similar topics and fostered a sense of identity among researchers.

“It just puts some meaningful structure to graduate school for students, and for us faculty, it gives meaningful structure to our research,” Harden said. “It also kind of recreates that community that I grew up in, so to speak.”

In the spirit of that community, Harden and lab collaborators hold a pitch day at the start of every new semester, a brainstorming session in which research ideas are “thrown out to see what sticks.” For an idea to move forward, a subset of group members must be interested in pursuing it, it should be feasible to complete while current graduate students are at Notre Dame, and it should align with the group's skill set.

“I also want the lab members thinking about research that will make a big impact with experts, political practitioners, and even on public discourse about how legislative institutions play a role in the health of American democracy,” Harden said.

One of those ideas centered on whether state legislators were held accountable for supportive roles they played during the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. To identify the answer, the entire seven-member lab examined data sets ranging from legislators’ social media posts about election misinformation to those who formally signed a letter to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

What RPL researchers largely found was that legislators faced minimal accountability — only those who physically went to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were punished by voters, parties, and/or colleagues. Their findings led to the paper “The Consequences of Elite Action Against Elections,” which was published in the British Journal of Political Science.

“I can't imagine doing that paper by myself,” Harden said. “That paper has essentially four major analyses in it, all of which could have been one paper by themselves. There's no way I would have done all of those analyses as well as they're done on my own.”

But beyond his research success, Harden said what’s been most rewarding has been being a part of graduate students’ futures and fostering a community where organic collaboration occurs — something that his mentor Carsey, who passed away in 2018, would’ve appreciated.

“I have done a lot of my career without that sounding board, without that person who really kind of brought me up in the discipline,” Harden said. “That's hard because he and I were very close. So I'm really proud that I have created a community here that I know he would’ve loved.”

Harden’s forthcoming work on his solo project, “A Falsification Framework for Investigating Observed Covariate Balance,” has been slow, steady, and, admittedly, very frustrating for him. The paper, which develops methodological tools for evaluating data generated without controlled experiments, is currently in the revise-and-resubmit process.

“The process has felt so unnatural to me,” Harden said. “What I’ve found is that working collaboratively produces better work, and it’s a more enriching and engaging process if you do it in community.”

Originally published by Mary Kinney at al.nd.edu on May 06, 2026.

The Tocqueville Fellowship at the Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government (CCCG) brings classroom theory into conversation with the complexities of public life. Designed to mentor the next generation of leaders in public service, law, the Church, and industry, the program is built on a foundation of rigorous interdisciplinary diversity. The current cohort of fellows represents a vast cross-section of the Notre Dame undergraduate body, drawing from academic backgrounds as varied as Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Classics, Art History, Accounting, and Business Technology. This intentional mixing of disciplines ensures that no single political or academic orthodoxy dominates the discourse.

The strength of this diverse community is best seen in the way students from vastly different professional trajectories find common ground. On any given day, Maria O’Dea, a senior ACMS major and future Air Force Space Operations officer, might be found debating the ethics of zoning laws or the nature of the judiciary alongside Lucy Spence, a junior majoring in the Program of Liberal Studies and Piano Performance and editor-in-chief emerita of The Irish Rover. They are joined by first-year students like Xavier Williams, a Global Affairs major and competitive debater who brings a background in policy-driven advocacy for marginalized communities. By bringing together students from fields ranging from Marketing and Economics to Philosophy and French, the fellowship creates a unique environment where the pursuit of truth is a collaborative, multifaceted effort.

This diversity of perspective becomes particularly potent during the program's signature colloquia and organized meetings, where fellows test their ideas in high-level discussions with leaders across the ideological spectrum. In the past, fellows have engaged in small-group conversations with guests ranging from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Cardinal Gerhard Müller to LA Times columnist Harry Litman and political leaders like former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and current Mayor of South Bend James Mueller. For Williams, the fellowship provides a "rare space where you can dive into deep intellectual conversations with people who are incredibly thoughtful, but also just a lot of fun to be around."

Beyond the traditional political sphere, the program offers fellows unprecedented access to the American judiciary. The opportunity to sit for private lunches with Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh allows students to see the human side of constitutional law. Reflecting on these encounters, Maria O'Dea observed that the experience provided "real insight into how the principles I've studied manifest in the modern world." She noted that "sitting at the same table... hearing their candid responses to our questions made me realize how integral humanity is to the American system." For a student of constitutional studies, these moments turn legal theory into a living reality, showing how the lessons of the classroom collide with actual lived experience.

Ultimately, these interactions push fellows to look beyond the superficiality of modern political discourse. Lucy Spence describes the current cultural landscape as a "tangled and often unintelligible web of reels, posts, articles, and interviews" that often obscures the truth. By engaging with figures at the forefront of modern concerns—from policy experts like Jay Bhattacharya to high-ranking religious leaders—Spence found that the fellowship "cut out that noise." She explains, "I was forced to think much more seriously about topics I had previously formed a fixed opinion on." This process of intellectual refinement fundamentally changes how students understand their duties as citizens.

Director of the CCCG Professor Phillip Muñoz noted that “a free society depends not on the absence of disagreement, but on the capacity to engage it well. This is exactly what the Tocqueville Fellowship aims to cultivate, both on Notre Dame’s campus and beyond.”

The fellowship attracts undergraduates from a variety of academic disciplines. Ava Grace, a junior Biology major, describes how her engagement in the Tocqueville Fellowship complements her study of science. She says, “It has given me a space to think more deeply about questions of purpose, responsibility, and faith in a way that complements my scientific coursework.” Grace continues, “Discussions grounded in Catholic Social Teaching and readings on technology and modern life have helped me think more intentionally about the kind of life I am preparing for.”

The Tocqueville Fellowship does more than just educate; it builds a close-knit intellectual community that persists long after the formal meetings end. Through social events like tailgates, casual lunches, and Christmas parties, fellows forge bonds that transcend their political differences. As Williams puts it, the program "fosters the kind of genuine community and pursuit of truth that Notre Dame is all about." By providing funding for internships, conferences, and research, the CCCG ensures that these future leaders are connected to an extensive network that will support them throughout their careers.

Learn more about the Tocqueville Fellowship here.

Originally published by Jonah Tran at constudies.nd.edu on May 05, 2026.

This spring break, ONDISC Undergraduate Fellows spent a week in Poland participating in staff rides, site visits, and meetings with military and policy leaders.

The program began in Gdańsk, where fellows conducted a staff ride focused on the Solidarity movement. Moving through Old Town, they visited St. Bridget's Church, the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of the 1970, and the European Solidarity Center. They then traveled to Westerplatte, where they examined the opening battle of the Second World War through first-person character presentation that explored the tactical, political, and human dimensions of the conflict.

From Gdańsk, fellows continued to Malbork Castle and conducted a staff ride on the Teutonic period, before visiting the Second World War Museum. The transition from Gdańsk to Warsaw allowed fellows to trace Poland's history from the origins of conflict and resistance to postwar reconstruction, and to reflect on how geography and historical experience shape national security strategy.

Midweek, fellows visited Powidz Air Base, where they toured the Amy Prepositioned Stocks facilities and met with the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade. In Warsaw, they also visited the 1st Air Base and met with senior Polish Military leadership, including the operational commander of the armed forced. These engagements provided insight into how Poland approached deterrence, readiness, alliance and cooperation within NATO.

In addition to military engagements, fellows met with the Polish Institute of International Affairs, the U.S. Embassy Defense Attaché Office, and the Center of Easter Studies. These discussions focused on NATO strategy, regional security, and Poland's role on the alliance's eastern flank, particularly in light of Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine.

The program concluded with a staff ride in Warsaw on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and 1944. Fellows walked key sites across the city, including the Mila 18 area, Old Town, and the Warsaw Uprising Museum, examining the human dimension of conflict and the role these events continue to plan in Poland's national Memory.

The Poland trip reflected ONDISC's approach to combing academic study with practical experience. Fellows left Poland with a stronger understanding of how historical cases inform strategic thinking and how past conflict continue to shape today's security environment.

Originally published by Rossana Pineyro at ondisc.nd.edu on May 01, 2026.

This year, nine undergraduate students from disciplines across the University earned honors for their strong research skills and effective use of library resources and services in their course assignments, research projects and creative work.

“I am delighted to see the creative and diverse research demonstrated by this year’s winners,” said Margaret Meserve, Edward H. Arnold Dean of the Hesburgh Libraries. “The quality of undergraduate research at Notre Dame is extraordinary. Here in the Libraries, we’re proud to provide services, collections, and spaces that support and inspire students as they grow as scholars.”

The award, sponsored annually by the Hesburgh Libraries, invites undergraduate students to submit a brief essay describing the many ways they used library resources for a project or assignment completed during summer 2025, fall 2025, or spring 2026.

Congratulations to the 2026 Library Research Award winners!

Capstone or Thesis Research

First Place – $2,500
Gabriela Sierocka, Senior
College of Arts & Letters, Computer Science

“I needed not just books but objects: the kind of primary materials that ask you to slow down, that resist the speed of digital research, that insist on being read with attention…The Hesburgh Libraries provided that, repeatedly and generously, in ways I could not have anticipated when I began.”

Second Place – $1,200
Kate Rafford, Senior
College of Arts & Letters, American Studies and Economics

“My thesis would not have been possible without the sources I found in the University Archives collection, further supported by library workshops, databases, search tools, print and digital resources, and study spaces. I am very thankful to the library staff for guiding me through this journey and consistently supporting the resources that enable student success.”

General Research

First Place – $1,500
Maria Eduarda Grill da Silveira, Sophomore
Keough School of Global Affairs, Global Affairs and Economics

“When I first typed that research question into a blank document, what I could not have anticipated was how completely Hesburgh would shape the answer… Every resource appeared at the precise moment the research demanded it, not as a supplement to the project, but as its foundation.”

Second Place – $750
Sadie Johnston, Junior
Mendoza College of Business, Marketing and Spanish

“My project illustrates Hesburgh Library’s role as a catalyst in independent research — providing not only a physical space, but also an intellectual one for complex analysis, methodological mastery, and creative, multidisciplinary inquiries.”

First Year Research

First Place – $1,500
Ada Duru Ak, Freshman
Keough School of Global Affairs, Global Affairs

“I do not think I could have pulled together the primary sources, the theoretical framework, and the supporting details as effectively without Hesburgh’s resources… I am grateful for the way the library supports student research, and this project made me appreciate how much is here, and how much I would have missed without it.”

Second Place – $750
Maggie Sheehan, Freshman
College of Science, Biological Sciences and English

“When I submitted my final essay, my professor commented that it was well-researched. As I reflected on this comment, I realized that it was all due to the resources provided by the Hesburgh Library.”

Emerging Scholar - $500

Valeria Bautista Misakova, Senior
College of Science, Physics and American Studies

“Archival work continues to shape history as we understand it today, and I’m grateful to have been part of the growing effort, all due in part to the resources at Hesburgh Libraries.”

Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship Award Winners - $500

Yingxin (Cindy) Liu, Senior
College of Arts & Letters, Economics, Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, and Japanese

“Throughout my research journey, Hesburgh Library offered stable computing resources for data analysis, workshops on academic writing and locating economic literature, and access to librarians and curators who guided me in identifying reliable databases.”

Leina Ulutoa, Junior
College of Arts & Letters, Political Science and Japanese

“Having participated in VR through the Immersive Technologies Lab, my research project and presentation became available in interactive, stimulating, and powerful ways.”

James Kirk and Abigail Hemmen are digging into this political paradox, surveying Americans to answer the question, “In what contexts are American citizens most supportive of compromise?”

The two political science graduate students were able to start working on this project after receiving a Catalyst Grant from the University of Notre Dame’s Democracy Initiative in fall 2024. The multiyear investment allows them to finally explore issues they’ve been contemplating for years.

“We need to be thinking more strategically about what Americans actually mean and in what context they actually want to see their representatives compromise,” Kirk said.

Kirk and Hemmen are approaching the idea of compromise from several angles, getting a more realistic and nuanced view of how Americans feel about it. Instead of just asking, “Do you support compromise?” their surveys give respondents specific scenarios tied to controversial issues like abortion and transgender rights — topics where compromise becomes less hypothetical and more personal.

Their research is also capturing changes in Americans’ feelings about compromise in response to major events. When the federal government shut down in 2025, for example, Kirk and Hemmen couldn’t send out their planned survey questions for fear that current events would skew the results, so they crafted new questions about the shutdown, gathering insights into a very specific situation.

Kirk and Hemmen came up with the idea for this project in fall 2021, when they were tossing around research ideas at a Rooney Democracy Institute workshop, not long after events that challenged longstanding assumptions about American democracy.

“American politics has looked at the challenges in the development and persistence of democracy in other countries and said, ‘Oh, that could never happen here,’” Kirk said. “Political scientists have to think about how we can’t take for granted the norms of democracy that we teach to children in Schoolhouse Rock!”

Kirk and Hemmen hope that developing a better understanding of how Americans think about their government can help scholars, elected officials, and voters understand how democracy realistically works. That awareness can strengthen and protect American democracy for the present and future, Kirk said.

They’ll be sharing their results so far at the next meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, one of the largest gatherings of political scientists in the country.

Their project is one of many supported by the Democracy Initiative, a key component of Notre Dame 2033: A Strategic Framework and founded on the belief that democracy is a work in progress — with real resources needed to support that work.

Projects like Kirk and Hemmen’s require years of surveys that often depend on unreliable piecemeal funding from several small grants, but the Democracy Initiative makes it so Kirk and Hemmen don’t have to waste time worrying about how they’ll fund another month of research.

And that advantage isn’t just a nice perk; it’s imperative for a project dependent on collecting a large and diverse data set. Kirk and Hemmen will continue to examine more controversial and complex issues as public opinions and priorities fluctuate.

“We’re trying to get at people’s feelings, so it’s an ever-changing and very relevant project with a lot of different problems to think about,” Hemmen said.

“Political scientists, professors, and teachers are still working on better understanding American democracy with the goal of making it better and stronger — something that’s sustainable for future generations.” – James Kirk, ’25 Ph.D.

Kirk and Hemmen hope their project will continue years beyond their time as graduate students, tying them back to Notre Dame. Hemmen will receive her Ph.D. this spring, and she credits the project with her increased confidence in the kind of research she wants to base her career on.

“I’ve been able to mark the quantitative skills I’ve gained over my time here and the really good relationships I’ve developed with my grad school peers, my advisor, and faculty members,” she said.

Kirk is already seeing how the project impacts his future as a political scientist — he got his Ph.D. last year, and he’s now a visiting assistant professor of government at Smith College in Massachusetts. He’s found that showing his students the research he and others have done motivates them to engage with politics and fulfill their civic duties, even when their impact feels small.

“There’s so much negativity about politics and government in American democracy now — for valid reasons — but if I had just hopelessly given up on American democracy, I wouldn’t be doing this line of work,” he said. “Political scientists, professors, and teachers are still working on better understanding American democracy with the goal of making it better and stronger — something that’s sustainable for future generations.”

Originally published by Adah McMillan at al.nd.edu on April 27, 2026.

David Campbell, the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.

Campbell was one of the 252 leaders in academia, the arts, journalism, policy, and science announced Wednesday as members of the newest Academy class. Other notable names among the group include actor and director Jodie Foster, writer Barbara Kingsolver, stage and screen legend Rita Moreno and novelist Colson Whitehead.

“It is truly an honor to be elected to the Academy — it is gratifying and humbling at the same time,” Campbell said. “I am thankful that Notre Dame has provided such a supportive environment for my research and that I am surrounded by so many fantastic colleagues.”

A renowned scholar of civic and political engagement, Campbell’s work has advanced the understanding of how American attitudes toward religion have changed over the past 60 years, why secularization has rapidly advanced due to politics, and how women holding public office inspires political engagement among young people.

“We could not be more thrilled about David’s election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” said Kenneth Scheve, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts & Letters and a 2020 inductee of the Academy. “His research has transformed our understanding of how our social networks — our schools, neighborhoods and churches — shape participation in politics and, in turn, our civic life. His election recognizes and celebrates the importance of these contributions.”

Campbell is the author or co-author of five books, including “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” with Robert D. Putnam (Simon & Schuster, 2010), which won book awards from the American Political Science Association and the Religion Communicators Council. His other books include “Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life” (Princeton, 2008) and “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” with John C. Green and Geoffrey C. Layman (Cambridge, 2020), which won the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s Distinguished Book Award and was runner-up for the APSA’s Hubert Morken Award for the Best Book on Religion and Politics.

His most recent book, with Christina Wolbrecht, is “See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People” (University of Chicago, 2025). He has written or co-written 20 book chapters and 38 peer-reviewed journal articles and edited three collected volumes. In February, the Academy published a guide, titled “Preparing Students for Civic Life: A Guide for Higher Education Leaders,” developed by a group of university presidents faculty, and civic experts, led by Campbell.

Campbell will be inducted into the Academy at a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October. He will join the Political Science section, whose roster of current members includes university chancellors Andrew David Martin (Washington University in St. Louis) and Daniel Diermeier (Vanderbilt University) and noted scholars Hahrie Han (Johns Hopkins University) and Putnam (Harvard University).

Campbell holds a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and a master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2002 and has held multiple leadership positions on campus, including chair of the Department of Political Science from 2015 to 2021 and director of what is now known as the Rooney Democracy Institute from 2009 to 2015. He currently serves as director of the Democracy Initiative, an interdisciplinary research, education and policy effort focused on advancing solutions to sustain and strengthen global democracy, which launched in 2023.

“Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a remarkable honor, recognizing the significance of David Campbell’s scholarship in American democracy and his national leadership in civics education,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost at Notre Dame. “We are proud to have such a superb scholar-teacher as founding director of our University-wide Democracy Initiative.”

Campbell is a go-to expert and op-ed author for major media outlets seeking perspective and commentary on American politics and religion, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and The Conversation. He is the previous recipient of an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Templeton Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.

Since its founding during the American Revolution by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th.

In addition to Campbell, more than 30 other members of Notre Dame’s faculty have been previously elected to the Academy, including President Emeritus Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.; Robert Audi, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy; and Declan Kiberd, professor emeritus of English and Irish studies. Other Notre Dame faculty elected to the Academy for their work in political science include Scheve; Dianne Pinderhughes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science; and Scott Mainwaring, the Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science.

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at news.nd.edu on April 24, 2026.

Having grown up in both Louisiana and Morocco, Faiza Filali arrived at Notre Dame as a speaker of seven languages with plenty of global experience. So when she started planning her academic path in international politics, she could’ve easily gotten a head start in a number of specialties.

But instead, Filali used her background to decide what not to do.

“I was interested in building expertise in a really specific region that I had no natural correlation to,” she said.

Because she spoke English and French, she ruled out studying American or European politics. And with a childhood full of Arabic, Berber, Darija, and Tamazight, Africa and the Middle East were out of the running, too. That left Latin America and Asia, but because Filali learned a little Spanish in high school, Asia — East Asia specifically — was declared the winner with her addition of minors in Asian studies and Korean to her political science major.

To further refine her studies, she added a supplementary major in international peace studies and became an undergraduate fellow of the O’Brien Notre Dame International Security Center.

Now a senior, Filali’s turned nothing into quite a something as she’s used her undergraduate years to become an expert in East Asian politics, studying abroad in South Korea several times, learning Japanese as well as Korean, and seeing regional politics in action through Notre Dame’s Washington Program.

And she’s found the issue she wants to focus on for the rest of her career: nuclear nonproliferation.

Nuclear politics are a major part of East Asian politics, as many nuclear powers and U.S. allies are spread throughout the region. But potential nuclear attacks could be disastrous for the entire planet.

Filali hopes that by utilizing both her specialized education and her cross-cultural connections, she can make a lasting impact.

“I know the world can be a better place,” she said. “That’s exactly why I’m in my field — why I care so much about ending the nuclear crisis.”

Finding her vocation

While nuclear nonproliferation is a hugely important issue, it’s not necessarily a high priority for the typical college student. But it’s become something Filali just can’t ignore.

As a sophomore, her interest in East Asian politics brought Faiza to an internship at the National Committee on North Korea (NCNK), which she completed as part of the Washington Program, an Arts & Letters experience that allows students to spend a semester studying and interning in the nation’s capital. She sat in on several meetings between high-level officials, receiving firsthand exposure to developments in the nuclear policy issues that define U.S.-North Korea relations.

“I noticed that there was this tizzy around talking about the nuclear question because we fully understand that nuclear warheads are out of our control,” Filali said. “Nuclear posturing and nuclear proliferation are assigned powers and responsibilities, but they’re also completely at the whim of any leader of a nuclear nation.”

International conflicts occurring during Filali’s internship further emphasized the importance of nuclear nonproliferation. She wondered whether nuclear war was as far away as most people believed.

This remained on her mind as she finished her internship and returned to Notre Dame, stayed with her as she read the news, and came to the forefront as she mulled over her vocation with her academic advisors.

“It hit me that if I could do one thing for the next generation, it would be this,” she said.

Filali plans to devote her entire career to ending the nuclear crisis. She’s currently applying to graduate programs in international relations so that she can fight nuclear proliferation as a scholar, and she’s already started working on it with her senior thesis.

Titled “Bombs in the Back of Our Minds,” Filali’s senior thesis argues that nuclear proliferation is not a natural process — the existence of nuclear weapons should not be considered inevitable and permanent.

“Nuclear weapons are the biggest international anxiety, but for decades, we’ve just been like, ‘This is completely normal,’” Filali said.

Nuclear powers maintain their arsenals to sustain credibility and deterrence against adversaries, Filali said. The idea is that if a country has enough nuclear weapons, no one will send a nuclear attack their way for fear of retaliation — it’s mutually assured destruction.

“Every experience I’ve had in the past four years has shaped me into a much better person than I was before.”

In her thesis, Filali uses a thought experiment to assess how states respond and create rationality and where the strategy of deterrence has worked and where it’s failed, creating policy implications with the results. She also examines the ways different countries navigate their nuclear anxieties — like how the U.S. builds nuclear alliances while Ireland maintains a staunchly antinuclear position, despite the fact that it’s never experienced or initiated a nuclear attack itself.

“It’s a culmination of questions I’ve been asking for years,” Filali said.

In her senior thesis research, Filali has read plenty about what would happen if a nuclear scenario played out, but it was visiting Nagasaki, Japan — where remnants of a nuclear attack from over 80 years ago still linger — that put it all into perspective.

“I’ve been very lucky to see so many beautiful things around the world, but I don’t think I ever resonated with the feeling of tragically beautiful until I was there,” Filali said. “I sat there, and I cried. It’s just a level of human atrocity you can’t even understand. There’s no active violence in front of you, but you can’t ignore it’s shadow.”

‘The pursuit of seeing humanity’

Filali is the type of person who can’t do nothing. She wakes up early and goes to bed late, constantly in action while her eyes are open.

On top of her regular classwork, she’s taken on responsibilities in Notre Dame Athletics, the Hesburgh-Yusko Scholar Program, and the Glynn Family Honors Program. Every day she can, she exercises her brain through her journal and her body through the gym. She’s more deeply explored her academic interests through clubs like the Alexander Hamilton Society, and she’s connected with her faith through the Muslim Student Association. But she also ventured outside her typical circles when she managed the men’s lacrosse team. Even when she does take time to rest and relax, she needs a book in hand to deflect boredom.

This spirit makes her an ardent academic and a formidable foe of the nuclear crisis. But what Filali calls her greatest asset isn’t her workaholic nature but her love of human connection.

“What matters most to me is the constant pursuit of seeing humanity in other human beings,” she said. “That’s what leads to peace in the end.”

With her knowledge of languages spanning several continents, Filali doesn’t usually have trouble communicating in a new place, even when she doesn’t speak the country’s official language. But when she visited Ireland last semester, she encountered a true language barrier for the first time.

Because she speaks no Celtic languages, Filali couldn’t understand the Irish speakers she encountered — and to her, that’s just not acceptable. Now she’s aiming to learn Irish — plus German and Spanish — to bring her language total to 11 before she turns 22 in August. She’ll hopefully get plenty of practice while completing the Irish Internship Program this summer at Notre Dame Dublin.

Filali’s love of human connection has taken her across campus and around the world. And it’s all been worth it.

“Every experience I’ve had in the past four years has shaped me into a much better person than I was before,” she said. “Notre Dame has taught me to seek opportunities where you can meet community and make friends and also learn about yourself, and I don’t think I would have gotten that anywhere else.”

Originally published by Adah McMillan at al.nd.edu on April 22, 2026.

According to a recent study from the University of Notre Dame, voters who are comfortable living in the middle — neither agreeing nor disagreeing when asked about substantive issues relevant to upholding democracy — might be the largest group to blame for democratic decline in the United States.

These “democratic neutrals” are what the study’s co-authors consider some of the most dangerous voters in the current political environment.

Neutrality as leverage in democratic backsliding

Using three surveys of more than 45,000 voting-age Americans, the researchers found that about half of the U.S. population expresses an attitude of democratic neutrality — or an “unwillingness to support or oppose policies or practices that undermine democracy,” explained Matthew E.K. Hall, lead author of the study recently published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

“Neutrality towards democracy, rather than outright opposition, has enabled democratic backsliding among various Western democracies as elected officials leverage citizens’ neutral attitudes to pursue antidemocratic outcomes,” Hall and his two co-authors wrote in their study.

The danger in this “neither support nor oppose” mentality lies in its lukewarm approach to what matters and to which lines should or should not be crossed when it comes to protecting our democracy. And that, Hall said, is problematic because if the public isn’t willing to hold its leaders accountable, then there’s nothing to stop them from behaving in ways that undermine democracy.

Neutrality on both sides of the aisle

Hall, who is the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional Studies in Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science and the director of the Rooney Democracy Institute, conducted the research with B. Tyler Leigh, research fellow at the Rooney Democracy Institute, and Brittany C. Solomon, the Thomas A. and James J. Bruder Assistant Professor of Administrative Leadership in the Mendoza College of Business.

Relying on data from two surveys they conducted in the summers of 2024 and 2025, and a third, larger survey sent weekly through the YouGov panel between 2022 and 2023, the researchers asked participants about their attitudes toward undemocratic practices. The questions included whether they agreed, disagreed or felt neutral when asked about their support for four examples of undemocratic practices: reducing outparty polling stations, ignoring outparty court decisions, remaining loyal to the party over the Constitution, and censoring partisan media.

Roughly 50 percent of participants checked the neutral category for at least one question. In contrast, outright agreement with undemocratic practices was much less common. But, between the two segments, up to two-thirds of respondents did not actively oppose undemocratic practices on the part of government officials, political candidates and leaders.

“Not actively opposing undemocratic practices is different than actively supporting democracy,” Hall said.

Neutrality, the researchers noted, is especially concerning because it can be associated with authoritarianism, tolerance of norm violations, extremism, distrust and obscuring antidemocratic views.

Another, equally critical point, Hall said, is that this neutrality exists at similar rates on both sides of the aisle, among Republicans and Democrats, as well as nonpartisans.

Why voters remain neutral

The researchers identified several reasons that voters choose the “neither agree nor disagree” category. Hall explained that some Americans tolerate politicians undermining democracy on a conditional basis if it means those entities enact policies they favor, but then they don’t like those same undemocratic decisions when made by leaders in the other party. They vote according to the mantra, “It depends.”

Some voters are just uncertain about which direction to lean, or believe they don’t have the knowledge or understanding to vote appropriately. Other voters are simply indifferent or apathetic — they simply do not care about politics. Another group of neutrals are ambivalent toward the survey questions because they care strongly in two conflicting directions and feel indecisive. A fifth group actually supports antidemocratic policies but feels social pressure to say they don’t, so they feign neutrality.

“Regardless of why Americans express neutrality, those who do so are just as likely to vote for authoritarian politicians as the relatively small number of Americans (less than one in five) who explicitly support undemocratic practices,” Hall said.

Potential solutions ahead of the 2026 midterms

Hall and his co-authors said that neutrality is not only a big problem, but it’s also a problem that will take a novel approach to fix.

“The problem is the people sitting on the sidelines, not paying attention or prioritizing short-term issues over the long-term stability of this country,” Hall said. “This will require a completely different approach with regard to persuasion strategy when you realize that’s the group we — as proponents of American democracy — need to be focusing on. Promoting democracy is going to look a little different than we thought.”

What does that promotion look like then? Hall and his co-authors see the primaries for the approaching 2026 midterm elections as the next opportunity to encourage Americans to vote for candidates who will support and protect American democracy. Messaging will need to encourage voters to “vote against candidates who undermine American democracy — even (and especially) if they are candidates from their own party,” emphasizing that staying neutral will no longer suffice.

“American politics have really been shaken in this last decade, particularly with regard to partisanship and polarization,” Hall said.

“The elites have lost control of the throttle and the mass public is driving — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing if the mass public values democracy. But if they don’t value democracy, then we will spin out.”

This research aligns with the University’s Democracy Initiative, which aims to establish Notre Dame as a leader in the study of democracy both in the United States and worldwide, as a convenor for conversations about and actions to preserve democracy, and as a model for the formation of civically engaged citizens and public servants. The initiative also bridges research, education and policy work across multidisciplinary units.

The research was supported by the Rooney Democracy Institute, which is dedicated to promoting scholarship, knowledge and dialogue on American democracy.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Originally published by Tracy DeStazio at news.nd.edu on April 21, 2026.

All proceeds from your generosity will be put towards the heart of our program, the students, to continue providing them with a valuable, memorable, and fulfilling academic experience.

Political Science is one of Notre Dame’s most popular majors, with over 50 different undergraduate courses to choose from every semester, and over 40 outstanding and accessible faculty members. Majoring in political science helps students develop the reading, writing, analytical, research, and data skills they need in order to make the most of their time at Notre Dame and after graduation. Our graduates use their education in political science to enrich their work in a wide variety of professions and live with purpose, and some go on to hold public office or work for the government. Learn why 98% of recent Notre Dame Political Science majors found full-time employment, enrolled in graduate school, entered service programs, or launched independent projects within six months of graduation.

The Ph.D. program in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science offers students outstanding opportunities for intellectual growth, professional development, and success in their careers. With exceptional strength in six main fields—American politics, comparative politics, constitutional studies, international relations, methodology, and political theory

We would like to thank you so much for your support! If you would like to make a gift to our department, visit our page on the Notre Dame Day website.

Featuring Jim McAdams
William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs Emeritus

Event Details:

Tuesday, April 28
3:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Holy Cross Village, Geenen Hall

Directions to Geenen Hall:

Enter at the joint entrance of Holy Cross Village and Holy Cross College (located off Route 933).
Once inside, veer right. You will see André Place (a large apartment building) on your left, just past the stop sign with the flagpoles.
Geenen Hall will be on your left as you enter.

Parking: You may park in the designated lot or along the south side of East Village Drive.

RSVP:  kbrown14@nd.edu

Originally published by Kelli Brown at retirees-emeriti.nd.edu on April 17, 2026.

As she prepares for her July 1, 2026 appointment as chair of Notre Dame’s Political Science Department, Professor Emilia Justyna Powell has occasion to reflect on her career at Notre Dame and the longstanding family tradition from which she came that ignited her academic interest in legal traditions.

Powell is a Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law. Additionally, she is a faculty fellow with the Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government (CCCG), and affiliated with numerous different centers and institutes on campus, such as the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights, and the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion.

Powell was born and raised in Grudziądz, Poland, and pursued a Master’s degree in law at the University of Nicholas Copernicus in Toruń. During her time in law school, she also received a diploma in British Common Law from the University of Cambridge and a diploma in European Law from the Jean Monnet Center for European Studies. Upon moving to the United States, Powell went on to continue her education, receiving both her masters and Ph.D. in Political Science from Florida State University.

Growing up in a long family tradition of lawyers, Powell describes herself as extraordinarily drawn to questions and concepts of legal tradition from an early age, particularly in comparative law and international law. “I always loved the history of law and how the different legal traditions breathe, how they operate. It’s just fascinating to me,” she explained. Powell continued saying that when she “came to the United States and did [her] Ph.D. in political science, [she] always gravitated towards questions of law. Even though my professors did not specialize in international law or domestic legal traditions,” she noted, “I just always wrote my papers about it.”

After completing her Ph.D. at Florida State University, Powell went on to become an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University, then at University of Alabama, before accepting a position at the University of Notre Dame in 2011. When choosing to come to Notre Dame, Powell noted the interdisciplinary research appeal that Notre Dame fostered, providing her with an optimal environment to combine both her passion for political science as well as law with her concurrent appointment with the law school.

Beyond its interdisciplinary opportunities, it was the University's values and dedication to its mission that attracted her. Powell noted the “wonderful atmosphere” consisting of both “exceptional undergraduate and graduate students,” coupled with the University’s serious academic pursuit. What most drew her to Notre Dame, though, was its distinct emphasis on human flourishing: “Notre Dame is a very unique environment, not only for students but for professors. It has a long tradition of caring for the human being and for holistic human development, not only knowledge but also faith and human flourishing.”

At Notre Dame, Powell’s current academic research encompasses peaceful resolution of disputes, the Islamic legal tradition, and modern constitutionalism. Much of Powell’s work has focused on how countries resolve their disputes peacefully according to international law, noting that this “scholarship bridges the study of international law and international relations [which] is really important to the study of global peace.” Her work in this area has been widely recognized among the international law academic community, earning her the “2025 Best Book Award” from the International Law Section of the International Studies Association for her 2023 book, Islamic Law and International Law: Peaceful Resolution of Disputes (Oxford University Press), which received two best book awards in 2022 from the International Studies Association, International Law Section, and the Religion and International Relations Section.

In her most recent work, Powell’s research has focused on the emerging questions in law and global governance. She recently completed her forthcoming edited volume, Global Order in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press), co-edited with Notre Dame Associate Vice President for Research for Special Initiatives Jarek Nabrzyski, who is also a concurrent professor of Computer Science and Engineering. Powell is also working on a book with Christina Bambrick, Filip Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow with the CCCG, that examines competing legal authorities in constitutions around the world.

This book centers around the competing authorities of state law, local customary law, and international law. “The contribution of the book is that it focuses on legal pluralistic constitutions and conceptualizes competition in constitutions as competition between different legal traditions or legal authorities,” she explained, “So this is a project in which we’re using cutting-edge methodology to questions of fundamental importance to the study of comparative constitutionalism.”

Powell described the CCCG as being "extraordinarily supportive of her scholarship” and a major support in helping her put her passion for research into practice. “Every book I have ever published while at Notre Dame and every article or research project, for the most part, has been substantially funded by CCCG. The center has always promoted all of my work.”

Director of the CCCG Vincent Phillip Muñoz said of Powell that she “exemplifies the kind of serious and disciplined inquiry that the center strives to cultivate, bringing both analytical rigor and a deep appreciation for the moral and institutional complexity of law that she cultivates in students.”

Powell highlighted the Center’s continued support of her research projects and contribution to her formation, stating, “This year the Center has generously agreed to help me study maritime law in Malta over the summer. So I would say that the Center has been foundational in my ability to explore legal traditions of any kind, be it maritime law, territorial sovereignty law, or the Islamic legal tradition.”

Furthermore, Powell’s teaching is closely affiliated with the Center, noting that “[many] of her courses are cross-listed [with] Constitutional Studies.” Every fall semester, she has the pleasure of teaching “Islamic Law and Constitutions” at the law school, which is also cross-listed with Constitutional Studies. In the spring semester, she also teaches a writing seminar on “Peaceful Resolution of International Disputes.”

As she continued to reflect on her time at Notre Dame, Powell cited her annual summer study abroad course in Poland as one of the most meaningful aspects of her tenure, stating, “The highlight of my tenure here at Notre Dame is to lead a study abroad, international law and the politics of genocide in Poland every summer. I have done it multiple years and this is a deep personal experience for students that's life changing for them." Though the topic of the course is somber, Powell describes herself as always “looking forward to seeing her students change [into] better people” because of it.

In addition to her scholarly work and notable teaching contributions at Notre Dame, Powell was recently named the incoming chair of Notre Dame’s Political Science Department. She is “very much looking forward to serving the department and helping my fellow faculty members here at the department to achieve their own professional goals as scholars, as teachers and researchers.”

Said Dean of the College of Arts and Letters Ken Scheve about her appointment, “Emilia brings a strong record of leadership, teaching, and expertise to this role. Her dedication and vision will serve the Department of Political Science well as it continues to build on its many strengths and pursue new opportunities in the years ahead.”

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Originally published by Allison Bowman at constudies.nd.edu on April 16, 2026.

On March 26, 2026, the Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government (CCCG) hosted opinion columnist and author Christine Emba as part of Students for Child-Oriented Policy’s (SCOP) annual White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP) Week. Co-sponsored by SCOP, the lecture—titled “The Emptiness of the Modern Sexual Ethic”—explored why the modern sexual ethic is failing today’s society.

WRAP Week serves as SCOP’s largest annual event, featuring a series of programs aimed at improving Notre Dame’s culture surrounding pornography, including speaker events. Current SCOP president and Tocqueville Fellow Jack Krieger ’28, who organized the event, worked with the CCCG to identify this year’s keynote speaker. He noted that Emba’s work, which directly engages questions of sexual ethics and pornography, made her a natural fit for the themes of WRAP Week.

Emba is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where her work focuses on gender and sexuality, youth culture, and social norms. A graduate of Princeton University, she is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life.

A former evangelical and convert to Catholicism, Emba drew on the inspiration behind her recent book, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation (2022), to frame her lecture. She described a recurring pattern in her conversations: a disconnect between what the modern sexual ethic promises and what people actually experience.

Emba characterized this “promise” as one of “freedom, empowerment, [and] fun,” while the lived reality often produces “confusion, sadness, and a vague sense that something was off.” She frequently encountered a similar refrain: “I consented to it, so I guess it’s fine, but it didn’t feel fine.” This, she argued, reveals a fundamental issue—what she termed “the gap between the legal permission and the actual goodness of the encounter.”

To explore this gap, Emba offered a three-part diagnosis of the modern sexual ethic. First, she identified what she called the “dating recession,” noting that roughly half of single adults have given up on dating, particularly among Gen Z. While the modern ethic promised a “golden age of dating,” facilitated by apps and fewer social taboos, many instead report feeling lonely, anxious, and exhausted.

Second, Emba described a broader “spiritual and cultural malaise.” The sexual revolution, she argued, failed to deliver on its promises of freedom and equality, having been “co-opted by both capitalism and American individualism.” In this framework, sex becomes detached from meaning and subject to market logic—encouraging individuals to “maximize your options, minimize your commitment, and optimize for experience.” Reduced to a transactional exchange defined by consent and physical pleasure, sex is stripped of its connection to the whole person.

Within this malaise, Emba emphasized the limitations of the consent paradigm, which has become the dominant moral framework of the modern sexual ethic. Consent, she argued, now functions as the primary ethical threshold, beyond which little moral evaluation occurs. By centering a legal standard rather than a substantive moral vision, this framework reduces sex to a kind of formal contract, obscuring deeper questions about human flourishing and the good.

Finally, Emba addressed the role of pornography in accelerating these distortions. She argued that American society has become inured to the sexualization and objectification of women, and that pornography shapes not only behavior but perception itself. Quoting early feminist critiques, she noted that pornography “doesn't just depict women's subjugation… it’s training its watchers in it.” As she put it, “Images aren't just images. They are, in fact, what make up our world… what we consume becomes part of our psyche,” raising concerns about an industry that profits from shaping desire without regard for human well-being.

After diagnosing these problems, Emba turned to the question of whether a path forward exists. She suggested that reducing sex to mere transaction leads to dissatisfaction, while recognizing its meaning can foster genuine human flourishing.

As an alternative, Emba pointed to the resources of the Christian sexual ethic. Central to this vision is the belief that human beings cannot be commodified. “If people bear God's image,” she explained, “they can't just be objects for our use. They have to be treated as ends in themselves, not means to our pleasure.”

Emba concluded by calling for a renewed engagement with this ethical framework alongside, rather than in place of, consent. In contrast to the secular model, she argued, the Christian ethic upholds human dignity in a way that allows for meaningful critique of pornography, dating app culture, and broader patterns of degradation. It “acknowledges longing, struggle, the difficulty of waiting, the understanding of failure,” while still offering hope.

The lecture was well attended by Notre Dame students and members of SCOP. Reflecting on the event, Krieger noted that he resonated most with Emba’s claim that something is fundamentally amiss in the modern sexual ethic: “It is deeply felt by men and women alike that relationships are not functioning properly, and yet so many are afraid to question the ethic itself, and instead wonder why they don’t seem built for love.” He added, “Yet, they are built for love—we as a culture just don’t often know what love looks like. The definition she provided for love—willing the good of the other—is something that we could do well to remember.”

Krieger also emphasized the importance of bringing difficult cultural conversations to the forefront on campus. “Discussions like these are important at Notre Dame because we, as college students, are enjoying a special period of time, which, if used well, can set us up for the rest of our lives,” he said. “Getting people talking about these problems gets them thinking about solutions, regarding both the broader sexual ethic and the problem of pornography.”

To view the full recording of Emba’s remarks, as well as past event archives, visit our lecture library. To stay up to date with additional CCCG programming, subscribe to our email list.

Originally published by Allison Bowman at constudies.nd.edu on April 09, 2026.

Ken Kollman has always been fascinated by politics. But he never wanted to work in it — he just wanted to study it.

Initially, he believed that meant a career path in journalism, so he majored in English and government while he was an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame. But while working on his senior thesis, he became enthralled with the possibilities of diving into research.

“I realized how much I liked getting really deep into something and devoting a lot of time and attention to something to try to get it right,” he said. “Research has a way of being incremental — you find questions you're interested in, and you pursue them.”

Throughout his career, Kollman has followed the winding road of his interests through both American and comparative politics. Along the way, he became a leading scholar in both subfields, fundamentally reshaping how scholars think about party systems and interest group politics.

After 32 years at the University of Michigan — where he served in leadership roles including associate department chair, director of graduate admissions, acting vice provost for international affairs, and director of the Center for Political Studies — Kollman joined Notre Dame this semester as the Dr. William M. Scholl Professor of Politics in the Department of Political Science and the Keough School for Global Affairs.

“One of my colleagues at Michigan said that Notre Dame just seems like it’s on fire — in a good way,” Kollman said. “And it’s fun to join something like that.”

The author of ‘classics’

A recurring theme throughout Kollman’s research has been the relationship between citizens and their governments — specifically, what they want their governments to do and what their governments actually do.

Early in his career, he examined American political organizations’ work in elections and lobbying and how that ultimately pressures the government. This led to his first book Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest Group Strategies (Princeton University Press, 1998), and several journal articles that tackle how public opinion shapes political parties, which then shape governments. Eleven years after its publication, the book was recognized by a Southern Political Science Association panel as one of the “classics” in the field of interest group politics.

Later, Kollman turned his attention to federalism, examining which levels of government are more or less responsive to people and how different levels of government do or don’t work together. This time, he looked beyond the U.S., incorporating perspectives from the European Union, Canada, and India, as well.

“If you don't study other countries, you don't see the great variety and the way that countries structure their governments and their elections and their constitutional processes,” he said.

Kollman wrote several books and articles on the subject, with The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States (Princeton University Press, 2004) being his most prominent. In it, Kollman challenges longstanding theories of party system size and nationalization.

One external reviewer described the work as “a classic, widely read and cited text that is a milestone in the study of party systems.” It won the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political Organizations and Parties Section in 2005, and also won the 2024 Martha Derthick Best Book Award from the APSA’s Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations section, which is given to the best book published 10 or more years ago that made a lasting contribution to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations.

“This book exhibits why Kollman is the rare scholar who has excelled in both the American and comparative politics subfields of political science,” said Geoffrey Layman, a Notre Dame professor of political science and chair of the department. “Here, Kollman displays a deep understanding of American politics — but by examining the U.S. in the context of a comparative analysis of the American, Canadian, British, and Indian party systems, he not only provides keen insights into party politics in countries outside the U.S., but uncovers insights into American politics that would not have been possible by focusing solely on the U.S.”

Hard work for the public good

Now, Kollman has focused his work on the fundamentals of global election operations and political parties. In his research, he links socially driven issues such as climate change, vaccinations, and crime rates to election data. He recently co-authored Dynamic Partisanship: How and Why Voter Loyalties Change (University of Chicago Press, 2021), which includes a detailed analysis of data from the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K on how and why voters’ allegiances to political parties shift.

To help him compile and understand these vast topics, Kollman relies on massive data sets, including the Constituency-Level Election Archive, the world’s largest repository of election results data, which he cofounded.

“From tiny Caribbean countries all the way up to India, we have all the data on pretty much almost every country that's ever had an election,” he said.

Kollman has received numerous awards for his groundbreaking work, including the 2024 Samuel Eldersveld Career Achievement Award from the APSA’s Political Organizations and Parties Section.

And he’s far from being done.

Outside of the four books he’s published, Kollman has also written 24 refereed journal articles, 11 edited volume chapters, and six editions of a single-authored textbook on American politics. He is also the editor of multiple editions of a reader for American government classes and co-editor of a book on computational models in political economy research and a book on area studies in American social science.

Kollman has also been involved in securing significant external grant funding, receiving more than $47 million in external grants as a principal investigator or co-principal investigator. And he’s been a key contributor to the compiling and archiving of several major publicly available datasets, including the Constituency-Level Election Archive, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the Subnational Geospatial Data Archive, and the National Neighborhood Data Archive.

“Developing publicly available datasets is generally underappreciated in terms of scholarly visibility,” Layman said. “But it is very hard work, and it provides very important public goods to the scholarly community.”

The opportunity to explore and expand that cultivation of data assets, plus the University’s commitment to tackling pressing political issues through the Democracy Initiative, ultimately drew Kollman to Notre Dame.

“I'm interested in being part of a process of institutional development and building new infrastructure that will help students, faculty, and other constituents of Notre Dame do their work better,” he said. “Notre Dame’s approach to higher education, the approach to the role of the university in society, has always resonated with me. And what Notre Dame offers to students, faculty, alums, the community, and the people who benefit from their research is very, very attractive to me.”

Originally published by Mary Kinney at al.nd.edu on April 01, 2026.

To commemorate the upcoming 250th anniversary of both the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government (CCCG) has partnered with the Mendoza College of Business to launch an inaugural one-credit course: “1776: The Ideas that Made the Modern World.”

The course, open to all Notre Dame students, alumni, and the general public, represents a unique collaboration between two of the University’s leading scholars: Vincent Philip Muñoz, Professor of Political Science and Director of the CCCG, and James Otteson, Professor of Business Ethics and Concurrent Professor of Political Science. Their vision is rooted in a simple but profound philosophy: students should engage directly with foundational texts rather than hearing about them second-hand. By following the successful "foundational" model of popular Notre Dame courses on St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis, Muñoz and Otteson aim to provide a semester-long deep dive into the pillars of Western thought.

This commitment to primary sources allows the professors to challenge modern misconceptions. For instance, while many view Adam Smith solely as the “father of capitalism,” Professor Otteson emphasizes that Smith’s motivations were deeply moral, focused on the "least among us" and the imperative to lift people out of poverty. By pairing Smith’s moral philosophy with a rigorous study of the Declaration of Independence—and later contrasting both with the writings of Karl Marx—the course explores diverse approaches to political economy. Ultimately, the goal is to show how these foundational thinkers, though different in method, all aimed to help individuals lead lives of dignity and prosperity. As Muñoz notes, “Everyone who wants to learn about the Declaration of Independence should have the opportunity to do so,” a sentiment that underscores the University’s decision to welcome the public into this academic conversation.

Otteson wants students to move past the common suspicions surrounding Smith. “I want people to learn something about that book beyond what they might have heard others say about it before,” he said. Despite being 250 years old, the questions posed in 1776 remain urgent. Otteson argues that Smith saw himself as describing universal and enduring features of human nature. “The human condition has not changed. Human beings are human beings,” Otteson explained. “We still have a scarcity of resources. People still have desires that are not met. And today we are still trying to answer the same questions that Smith posed in 1776.”

The course is a rare offering in the modern university landscape. While the Declaration of Independence is frequently taught, Smith’s foundational arguments for markets, trade, and the rule of law are often absent from modern economics and business curricula. “We are the inheritors of these ideas,” Otteson notes. “We should know where they came from and why they were articulated in the first place.” Looking toward the future, Otteson hopes this course is only the beginning. He envisions a series of eight foundational courses that undergraduates could take over four years, creating a "shared intellectual corpus" among students of all disciplines. He believes faculty should constantly ask what a graduate of the university should know before leaving, focusing on the creation of an "informed soul."

Muñoz emphasizes that the course reflects the deeper mission of the University itself. “At its best, a Notre Dame education invites students to wrestle with the ideas that have shaped our world and to consider their responsibilities as citizens in light of them,” he said. “This course is an opportunity to recover those conversations and to form students not only in knowledge, but in judgment.”

“A place like Notre Dame is exactly the place we should have a class like this,” Otteson concludes. “It may be that if we develop this into a program, we might be able to serve as a model for other universities. We can be leaders.”

The course benefits students on a fundamental level of citizenship, regardless of their background or plan of study. Amanda Pertierra, an Elementary Education instructor at Holy Cross College who has followed along with the course this semester, remarked, “I’ve found that the deeper you go into the Framers’ texts, the more nuanced your grasp of our current moment becomes.” Pertierra continued, “The past refracts into the present and generally leaves me with a sense of awe towards the American experiment, even as it remains a work in progress.”

First-year Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering student and Tocqueville Fellow Arav Fernandes reflected on how the course informs his commitments as an Air Force ROTC cadet: “1776 has been important for me to understand what it is I will be fighting for, both in the military and civilian life.” Fernandes says, "While it is challenging to encapsulate the vastly pluralistic histories of the American people, the course is intentionally and skillfully nuanced in tying them together and presenting them as undeniably American.”

Learn more about "1776" on the CCCG website.

Originally published by Jonah Tran at constudies.nd.edu on March 31, 2026.