About Professor Dennis Simon

Dennis Simon is an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. He is the recipient of SMU’s “M” Award, the Willis Tate Award, and President’s Associate award. He regularly teaches courses on congressional elections, the American Presidency, presidential elections, and the politics of change in the United States. Since the spring of 2008, he has taught a course on the Politics and Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement and served as the faculty leader of SMU’s Civil Rights Pilgrimage.

Professor Simon is a founding member of the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University, a non-partisan center that sponsors a variety of conferences and public programs as well as research by faculty and undergraduate students. At present, he serves the Tower Center as a member of its Faculty Advisory Committee and as Director of its American Politics and Economics Program.

His previous research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Women and Politics, and Gender and Politics. He is the recipient of the Southern Political Science Association’s Pi Sigma Alpha Award for his study of national forces in state legislative elections and, with Barbara Palmer, has twice received the Miriam Irish Award for their work on women in the electoral arena. His most recent book, with co-author Barbara Palmer, Women and Congressional Elections: A Century of Change will be published by Lynne Reiner in May of 2012. He is currently working on a manuscript entitled Understanding the Great Contradiction: Race, the South, and Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, 1824-2012.

Professor Simon regularly speaks to audiences about national elections, public opinion, the voting behavior of the American electorate, women and politics, the American Presidency, and the politics of change in the United States. Media appearances by Professor Simon include CNN, ABC World News Tonight, NBC News, the Washington Post, USA Today, and Texas Public Radio. He has been invited to speak before a wide variety of organizations in Texas and elsewhere.

He can be reached at dsimon@mail.smu.edu.