Calvin TerBeek
Department
Biography
Calvin TerBeek is an Assistant Professor of Government. His research focuses on polarization, political parties and political ideology, and public law. Specifically, his book manuscript delineates how polarization developed over the past century, as liberals and conservatives cleaved on the Constitution and control over the institutions of the "Establishment." He is working on a (co-authored) second book manuscript on legal liberal and progressive groups and why they're ineffectual vis-a-vis conservative legal groups. His research has been published in American Political Science Review, Law & Social Inquiry, Studies in American Political Development, American Political Thought, and an Oxford Handbook chapter, among other venues.
He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a J.D. From Tulane University School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Teaching Interests
Introduction to American Politics; polarization; modern conservatism and liberalism; Supreme Court and the politics of public law; political parties
Research Interests
polarization; modern conservatism and liberalism; Supreme Court and the politics of public law; political parties
Research and Publications
TerBeek, Calvin. 2025. “Maladapted: Our Exhausted Constitution, Our Exhausted Governing
Elites,” American Political Thought, forthcoming (symposium on Stephen Skowronek’s The
Adaptability Paradox)
TerBeek, Calvin. 2025. “‘After Constitutional Originalism.” American Political Thought, forthcoming
(symposium on Jonathan Gienapp's Against Constitutional Originalism)
Bloch Rubin, Ruth, Gregory Elinson, and Calvin TerBeek. 2024. “Macro-Level Pluralism:
Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative in the Study of Political History,” in the Oxford Handbook
of Methodological Pluralism in Political Science, edited by Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, Dino Christenson,
and Janet Box-Steffensmeier
Baumgardner, Paul and Calvin TerBeek. 2022. “The US Supreme Court is Not a Dahlian Court.”
Studies in American Political Development 36(1): 148-150 (State of the Field Issue)
TerBeek, Calvin. 2021. “‘Clocks Must Always Be Turned Back’: Brown v. Board of Education and
the Racial Origins of Constitutional Originalism.” American Political Science Review 115(3): 821-834
TerBeek, Calvin. 2021. “The Search for an Anchor: Living Constitutionalism from
the Progressives to Trump.” Law & Social Inquiry 46(3): 860-889 (review essay)
Oliver, Eric and Thomas Wood with Calvin TerBeek. 2018. “Chapter 9: A Nation Divided By
Magic,” in Enchanted America: Intuition and Reason in US Politics. University of Chicago Press