Political scientist & professor in Seattle
I study how governments classify groups and places, and how those labels shape power, rights, and memory. I’m interested in how ideas about nation, security, and belonging become rules people have to live by. I also build simulations and study tools that help students work through difficult ideas, try them out, and argue with them. Students can disagree with me; I want to hear how they got there.
Explore the simulations ↗
Israel–Palestine, explored through interactive cases. ↗Green River College · University of Washington
Off syllabus / Books & records
A few things worth
making time for.
Karam Dana
A study of how diaspora organizing, media, and politics helped move Palestine into American public debate—and the backlash that followed.
Twisted Teens
Research in progress
How can a town’s buildings survive while its people’s claims are pushed out of view?
In November 1948, Leonard Bernstein performed for Israeli troops in newly captured Beersheba. The Palestinian town’s buildings were still standing. Its inhabitants had been displaced. What happens when a city survives, but the people who made it a city cannot return? Still Standing…
Same election. Same crisis. Three sets of rules. Build, disrupt and repair governments under parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems. Compare real-country variations, weigh institutional tradeoffs, and turn a pattern into a testable research hypothesis.
My Substack / essays & notes
Essays on migration, political identity, Israel-Palestine, and the occasional record.