Paul Baumgardner

Associate Professor and Acting Chair (Spring) of Political Science

• Email: paulbaumgardner@augustana.edu
• Office: Old Main 315

Although originally from Kansas, Dr. Paul Baumgardner traveled around quite a bit before arriving at Augustana. In the years before his move to the Quad Cities, Baumgardner benefitted from fellowships, scholarships, and teaching positions at Princeton University, the American Bar Foundation, Lewis University, the Rutgers Law School Institute for Law and Philosophy, the University of Buffalo Law School Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy, and Belmont University.

Baumgardner completed a joint Ph.D. in the Department of Politics and the Humanities Council at Princeton University in 2020. His recent research interests fit within two broad categories. First, his research seeks to understand the history of American legal reform through an exploration of the relationship between legal scholarship, legal education, and the formation of movements bent on reforming the legal system. Second, his research seeks to understand how the competition of political ideas over the past fifty years has driven seismic changes within American constitutional law.

He is the author of "Critical Legal Studies and the Campaign for American Law Schools: A Revolution to Break the Liberal Consensus" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and a coauthor of "Keywords; For Further Consideration and Particularly Relevant to Academic Life" (Princeton University Press, 2018). His scholarship also has appeared in journals such as Law & Social Inquiry, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and Law and History Review.

Dr. Baumgardner believes in the transformative power of political science courses, not only because these courses help students make sense of past and present political phenomena, but also because they shine a light on areas where students can become politically engaged, apply their expertise, and make a difference. At Augustana, he teaches courses across the public law, American politics, and political theory subfields within the Department of Political Science.