John Geer

Vanderbilt Divinity School and the College of Arts and Science will honor one of the university's most revered alumni with the launch of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements. Read More

Divisive party politics continue to dominate attitudes among Tennessee residents on key social issues, including the state’s response to COVID-19, willingness to get vaccinated and questions about whether the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” according to the latest Vanderbilt University poll. Read More

Davidson County voters have slightly less confidence in their elected officials and core institutions compared to last year; however, a majority of Nashville residents still think the city is “generally headed in the right direction,” according to the latest Vanderbilt Poll-Nashville. Read More

Emily Greble, a historian of modern Europe whose research explores how the Balkans challenge presumptions about European history, is among 184 artists, writers, scholars and scientists awarded a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Read More

Centennial Professor of Philosophy John Lachs will retire and receive emeritus status on Aug. 15, after more than 50 years of teaching at Vanderbilt University. Lachs’ thought-provoking lectures have been perennial favorites among not only students, but also many alumni, who eagerly have signed up for his numerous appearances at Reunion and Vanderbilt chapter events. Read More

The College of Arts and Science has recognized more than 50 faculty with COVID-19 Innovative Teaching Awards, which celebrate faculty who responded to the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 by going above and beyond in adapting their coursework and teaching during the fall 2020 semester. Read More

Seth Bordenstein, Centennial Professor of Biological Sciences and director of the Vanderbilt Microbiome Initiative, has been elected to fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. Read More

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Steven D. Townsend, PhD’10, has been awarded a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship, one of the highest honors for young scientists who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study. Read More

Vanderbilt University announced today that alumni Carolyn Thomas Rogers, BA’75, and Robert Moss Rogers, BA’75, have made a $5 million gift to establish the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency in the College of Arts and Science. Read More

Former Vice President Al Gore and the 66th Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice each will provide timely conversations with Vanderbilt’s Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian and biographer, on Thursday, Jan. 14, to support the debut of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy. Read More

Samar Ali, JD’06, BS’03, has joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University as a research professor in political science and law. Her appointment was announced by John Geer, the Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science, and Chris Guthrie, dean and John Wade-Kent Syverud Professor of Law. Read More

After months of exploring how higher education could play a meaningful and active role in bridging longstanding partisan fissures, Vanderbilt University today launched the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, which aims to strengthen the nation’s democratic institutions by advancing evidence-based research in the national discourse on unity. Read More

The deep partisan divide in Tennessee has never been more apparent than on the questions of whether citizens will get the COVID-19 vaccine and curb holiday travel at the height of the global pandemic, according to the latest Vanderbilt Poll-Tennessee. The poll also found a deep chasm between registered voters on the legitimacy of the results of the presidential election. Read More

Twenty-nine prominent faculty from across campus comprise Vanderbilt University’s latest endowed chair honorees. They include scholars working in diverse areas—from election analysis and lung cancer research to the nascent field of neurolaw, exploring the brain mechanism underlying legal decision-making. Read More

Vanderbilt University alumni were offered the unique opportunity this fall to hear two of the country’s foremost political science experts, John Geer and Jon Meacham, discuss the U.S. presidential election in the four-part webinar series, “The 2020 Election: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Read More

Beshear, the first-term Democratic governor of Kentucky, was elected last November by a margin as thin as a surgical mask, just in time to steer his largely Republican state through a runaway pandemic, the resulting economic damage, and America’s most consequential reckoning with racial injustice since the 1960s. Read More

This election night, Sam Feist, BA’91, will perform one of his more unusual duties as head of CNN’s Washington Bureau. Assuming the results are clear-cut, he will—in consultation with CNN’s statisticians and political scientists—call the winner of the presidential race for the network. It is a responsibility he has held since 2004, and one that he does not take lightly. Read More

Chancellor Daniel Diermeier discussed his research and scholarship on management, political science, public policy and more during two recent virtual webinars with Owen Graduate School of Management and the College of Arts and Science. Read More

Michael Eric Dyson, a globally renowned scholar of race, religion and contemporary culture, will join Vanderbilt as Centennial Chair and University Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies in the College of Arts and Science and University Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society in the Divinity School on Jan. 1, 2021. Read More

Vaughan Jones, one of the world’s foremost mathematicians and a celebrated professor in the College of Arts and Science, has died. Read More