President-Elect Donald Trump and Vice President-Elect Mike Pence at a 'thank you' rally 
Photo:Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock

Donald Trump’s upset election raises many questions for the future of policy in the United States. From climate change to Obamacare the country is now on track for a reversal of some of the major initiatives of the last eight years. 

Throughout the campaign, Rutgers had been a center of original research and teaching about the U.S. political system and its impact on the lives of Americans. Rutgers faculty members, backed by their scholarly work, continually analyzed political trends and the most compelling issues facing citiczens. 

In the face of the significant political shift a Trump presidency brings, Rutgers faculty and staff will work to ensure that the public is kept apprised of potential consequences of new policy decisions and actions of the administration. Learn more about their work:

American Politics

Ross K. Baker is Distinguished Professor of Political Science who served in the offices of Democratic and Republican members of Congress, including as a scholar-in-residence the office of the Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid. His also worked as a consultant in the offices of Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT). His is the author of Is Bipartisanship Dead? (Paradigm Publishers, 2015) and is also a member of the Board of Contributors of USA Today. He has written for the opinion pages of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

Baker can be reached at 609-933-5445 (cell) or rosbaker@rci.rutgers.edu

Ruth B. Mandel, Board of Governors professor of politics and director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics, teaches and writes about women’s political leadership and history, focusing on women as candidates and officeholders. Mandel has taught first-year seminars including "Political Women: Some Who Dared" and  A Woman for President?” In spring 2017, she is offering a seminar entitled "Putting It Together: A Presidential Administration Takes Shape." She has been compiling information about women's presidential aspirations for several years and continues to study how campaigns deal with gender issues and reach out to women voters. She also examines the roles played by women’s political organizations and women political leaders, most notably Hillary Rodham Clinton. A founder and longtime director of Eagleton's Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), Mandel is now a senior scholar at CAWP.

To reach Mandel contact Kathy Kleeman at kleeman@eagleton.rutgers.edu or 848-932-8717

Climate Change

Anthony Broccoli is professor of Atmospheric Science, chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences and co-director of the Rutgers Climate Institute. His primary research interest is climate dynamics, especially the simulation of past climates and climate change. He has recently served as co-chief editor of the Journal of Climate, and he has been a contributor and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Broccoli can be reached at 848-932-5749 or broccoli@envsci.rutgers.edu

Jennifer Francis is a research professor with the Rutgers Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, where she studies the Arctic atmosphere and sea ice, climate change, and connections between climate change and extreme weather – with 40 peer-reviewed publications on these topics. She has taught courses in satellite remote sensing and climate-change issues, and also co-founded and co-directed the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative.

Francis can be reached at jafmocha@gmail.com

Robert E. Kopp is an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences and associate director of the Rutgers Energy Institute. His research focuses on understanding uncertainty in past and future climate change, with major emphases on sea-level change and on the interactions between physical climate change and the economy. He is a lead author of Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus and served as lead scientist for the technical analysis underlying the Risky Business Project. He was also a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report. Read a Q&A with Kopp on how the next president should address climate change here.

Kopp can be reached at Robert.kopp@rutgers.edu

Education Policy

Bruce Baker, a research professor at Rutgers' Graduate School of Education, studies the financing of education systems, and the equity, adequacy, and efficiency of public, charter, and private schools. He is an expert in charter school financing and accountability. In 2016, Baker authored the report “Exploring the Consequences of Charter School Expansion in U.S. Cities” for the Economic Policy Institute which examines concerns around charter school expansion. Baker was recently named among the nation's 100 most influential university-based education scholars by Education Week. He is the author of the blog School Finance 101. Read a Q&A here on charter school expansion and Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy Devos. 

To reach Baker contact Afsheen Shamsi (914) 217-0983 or afsheen.shamsi@gse.rutgers.edu

W. Steven Barnett is a Board of Governors Professor and director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. He studies the economics of early childhood education including costs and benefits, the long-term effects of preschool programs on children's learning and development, and the distribution of educational opportunities. He co-authored a recent groundbreaking report that found Head Start varies dramatically from state to state in funding, classroom hours, quality, and percentage of low-income children served. Read a Q&A here with Barnett on his report and Trump's nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price.

To reach Barnett contact Michelle Ruess at 609-658-6873 or mruess@nieer.org

Energy Policy

Paul G. Falkowski is Bennett Smith Professor in Business and Natural Resources/Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and is director of the Rutgers Energy Institute. His scientific interests include the evolution of Earth systems, paleoecology, photosynthesis, biophysics, biogeochemical cycles and symbiosis. Falkowski earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the City College of the City University of New York and his doctorate from the University of British Columbia. He has received numerous honors, including the Huntsman Medal, Hutchinson Prize and Ecology Institute Prize. He is the author of Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable.

Falkowski can be reached at falko@marine.rutgers.edu 

Family Leave

Terri Boyer is an assistant research professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) and executive director of the Center for Women and Work, a national leader in research and programs that promote gender equity, a high-skill economy and women's leadership and advancement. She followed the presidential race and its implications on the fight for paid family leave and pay equity.

To reach Boyer, contact Steve Flamisch at 848-252-9011 (cell) or steve.flamisch@smlr.rutgers.edu.

Gender and Politics

The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at the Eagleton Institute of Politics is nationally recognized as the leading source for data and scholarship on American women’s political participation. The center promotes greater understanding of women as voters, candidates and officeholders, and works to enhance women's leadership and influence in public life. CAWP's website is a valuable source for facts on women officeholders around the country, data and analysis on elections with women candidates, and research on women in politics throughout U.S. history. Director Debbie Walsh oversees leadership and campaign training programs empowering women to participate in politics and public life; research illuminating women’s distinctive contributions, roles and experiences in politics and government; and programs to provide up-to-the-minute information and historical perspectives about women as candidates, public officials and voters. She was named one of the 21 Leaders for the 21st Century by Women’s eNews.

CAWP partnered with the Barbara Lee Family Foundation to establish the nonpartisan Presidential Gender Watch project to track, analyze and illuminate gender dynamics in the 2016 elections.  The site also provides up-to-date polling data by gender and real-time analyses. Project coordinator Kelly Dittmar is an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden and scholar at CAWP. Dittmar is the author of Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategy in Political Campaigns. She studies gender and American political institutions, with a focus on how gender informs campaigns for candidates, campaign professionals and voters.

To reach Walsh or Dittmar, contact Kathy Kleeman at kleeman@eagleton.rutgers.edu or 848-932-8717.

Susan J. Carroll is a professor of political science and women’s and gender studies, School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, as well as senior scholar at the Eagleton Institute’s Center for American Women and Politics. A nationally recognized expert on women’s participation in politics, she has conducted research on women candidates, voters, elected officials and political appointees. Carroll is the author of numerous publications including More Women Can Run: Gender and Pathways to State Legislatures (with Rutgers political scientist Kira Sanbonmatsu) and Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics.

Contact Carroll at 848-932-8364 or scarroll@rci.rutgers.edu

Shauna Shames, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden, is an expert on American political behavior, with a focus on race, gender and politics. She has published articles, reports and book chapters on women as candidates, black women in Congress, comparative child care policy, work/family conflict, abortion, feminism, gay and lesbian rights, and U.S. public opinion. Read a Q&A with Shames on the intersection of gender and politics and emerging issues in the 2016 race here.

Contact Shames at 856-225-2974 or shauna.shames@rutgers.edu

Health Care
 
Joel Cantor is a Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and the founding director of the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Cantor is published widely in the health services and policy literature on innovations in health service delivery and the regulation of private health insurance markets. He serves frequently as an adviser on health policy matters to New Jersey state government, and was the 2006 recipient of the Rutgers University President's Award for Research in Service to New Jersey. 
 
Immigration

Janice Fine is an associate professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, where she teaches and writes about minimum wage issues and low-wage immigrant labor in the U.S., historical and contemporary debates regarding federal immigration policy, dilemmas of labor standards enforcement and innovative union and community organizing strategies. Fine, author of Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream, is also a member of the graduate faculty in political science as well as the Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers.

To reach Fine, contact Steve Flamisch at 848.252.9011 (cell) or steve.flamisch@smlr.rutgers.edu.

Income Inequality

William M. Rodgers III is a professor of public policy at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Prior to coming to Rutgers in 2000, Rodgers served as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. His research interests include income inequality, with a focus on labor and workforce development issues. The Century Foundation recently published his research on the link between food security and an increase in the minimum wage, and the Economic Policy Institute will publish his new research on racial and gender earnings inequality this fall.

Rodgers can be reached at wrodgers120@gmail.com or 848-932-1028.

The Presidency and the Media

David Greenberg, professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, is an expert in American political and cultural history, including the presidency, campaigns and elections, political parties, political ideas, public policy and public opinion. The winner of multiple awards and book prizes, he is the author of the Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, and Calvin Coolidge. He has been an editor at Slate and The New Republic and is now a contributing editor to POLITICO Magazine.

Contact Greenberg at davidgr@rutgers.edu or 646-504–5071

The State of Race Relations in 2016

Melanye Price is an associate professor of Africana studies and political science in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her research and teaching interests include black politics, public opinion and social movements. Her second book, The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race, which examines the ways President Obama uses race to deflect negative racial attitudes and engage with a large cross-section of voters, was published this summer. Her first book, Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion, examined contemporary support for black nationalism. She is a contributor to the Presidential Gender Watch project at The Center for American Women and Politics. Read a Q&A with Price that examines how a triumphant moment in American history ignited our country’s racial tensions here.

Price can be reached at mtprice@rci.rutgers.edu  

Reproductive Rights

Johanna Schoen, is an associate professor of history in the School of Arts and Sciences whose research focuses on the long-running battle over access to reproductive health in the United States. Her first book, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare was based on research which, when shared with journalists, resulted in an apology by North Carolina’s governor. Her second book, Abortion after Roe, sheds light on the experience of performing and receiving abortions from the legalization of abortion in the 1970s to the rise of the anti-abortion movement in the 1980s, 1990s and beyond.

Schoen can be reached at johanna.schoen@rutgers.edu  

Russian-U.S.Relations

David Foglesong is a professor in the Department of History and the author of two books on American-Russian relations: The American Mission and the “Evil Empire": The Crusade for a "Free Russia" Since 1881 and America's Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920. In collaboration with two Russian historians, he is now writing a comprehensive history of American-Russian relations since 1776.  

Foglesong can be reached at fogleson@history.rutgers.edu or 650-417-4230. 

Jochen Hellbeck, a professor of history, is a specialist on the history of 20th century Russia and the Soviet Union, with a focus on World War II and its enduring memory.  Hellbeck’s most recent book, Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich , is the first study to probe the meaning of the Battle of Stalingrad  for the Soviet soldiers and civilians who defended the city against the Germans in 1942 and 1943; it has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, German, and Chinese. His website, Facing Stalingrad, features portraits and interviews taken with German and Russian veterans who fought at Stalingrad. 

Hellbeck can be reached at 848-932-8230 or hellbeck@rutgers.edu

The Supreme Court and Constitutional Law

Earl Maltz is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers Law School and author of more than 50 articles and two books including Rethinking Constitutional Law: Originalism, Interventionism, and the Politics of Judicial Review and Civil Rights, The Constitution and Congress, 1863-1865. He teaches constitutional law, employment discrimination, conflicts of law and a seminar on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Maltz can be reached at emaltz@camlaw.rutgers.edu or 856-225-6382

Taxes

Michael Hayes is an assistant professor of public policy and administration at Rutgers University-Camden. His research expertise includes public budgeting and finance, education policy, state and local tax policy, and public management. 

Hayes can be reached at michael.hayes@rutgers.edu, in the office at 856-225-6561 or on his cell at 732-858-4533.

Trade

Thomas Prusa is a professor of economics in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, whose research focuses on trade policy decision making by the United States. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has published more than 50 articles in leading journals and books. Prusa has provided expert testimony before the U.S. International Trade Commission. Read our Rutgers Today Q&A with Prusa on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement here.

Prusa can be reached at 908-443-1565 or prusa@econ.rutgers.edu

Global Business and Chinese Currency

Farok Contractor is a Distinguished Professor in the Management and Global Business Department at Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick. His areas of expertise include Asian business, foreign direct investment and government policies toward foreign investment. He has written more than a hundred scholarly papers and also writes articles covering contemporary issues dealing with international business for a worldwide audience in 133 nations, including an article that appeared on USNews.com examining allegations that China manipulates its currency.

Contractor can be reached at fjcontractor@embarqmail.com or 215-353-3666.

Global Economics

Farrokh K. Langdana, a professor in the Finance and Economics Department at Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, is director of the Rutgers Executive MBA Program. His areas of specialization include monetary and fiscal theory and international trade and global macroeconomic policy. He also writes articles for his blog, including a recent post, “Donald Trump, Angry Americans, and Misapplied Trade Theory,’’ in which he argues that the American trade model is broken. Langdana has written extensively on macroeconomics, including his most recent book, Macroeconomic Policy: Demystifying Monetary and Fiscal Policy.

Langdana can be reached at langdana@business.rutgers.edu

Voter Access

Lorraine C. Minnite is associate professor and chair of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers University-Camden. She has served as an expert witness in numerous recent voting rights cases challenging state laws restricting access to the ballot and does research on issues of inequality, social and racial justice, political conflict and institutional change. She is the author of The Myth of Voter Fraud and co-author of Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters (with Frances Fox Piven and Margaret Groarke).

Contact Minnite at lcm130@camden.rutgers.edu


For media inquiries, contact Andrea Alexander at aalexander@ucm.rutgers.edu or 848-932-0556.