Work in Progress

Cold War social science in the United States

I’m also at work on an as-yet-unnamed project on the surprising interdisciplinary exchanges in U.S. social science during the Cold War. These exchanges gave rise to what we now consider mainstream American political science, and gave birth to a new field that was at the time called (by some of its progenitors) “policy sciences,” and which we now know as the discipline of “public policy.” I have presented work from this project at conferences of the Northeast Political Science Association, the Association for Political Theory, and the Social Science History Association. It’s based in archival sources, and is therefore even more slow-moving than my usual snail’s pace. With support from the American Philosophical Society and the Office of the Dean of Faculty, I am on leave during the 2026–27 academic year so that I can get this project off the ground. If you wish to follow the journey, then you can read my public notebook.