About
Jeremy Johnson received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University. He holds additional graduate degrees in public administration and history from Villanova University. Since arriving at Carroll College in 2011 he has taught courses in American Politics including: American National Government; Public Policy; Social Welfare Policy; Health Policy; the Presidency and Congress, Elections, Political Parties, and Public Opinion; American Political Development; City Politics; Montana State Politics; Political Research Methods; American Political Thought; Topics in American Politics; Freshman Alpha Seminar; Senior Seminar; and supervises the political internship program.
Jeremy is currently working on a book manuscript, provisionally entitled The Republican Welfare State: A Century of Social Policy Re-Invention. Before embracing the study of American politics, Jeremy was a buff on the history of the Byzantine Empire and is the Interim Director of the Classics program at Carroll. Curriculum vitae
When I accepted the offer to become a professor of American politics at Carroll College in 2011, I had no idea what adventures to expect in the coming years. I did not know anyone in Montana; I was starting anew. I grew up in suburban Philadelphia and had always lived on the east coast. Before moving to Montana, I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, for six years where I received my Ph.D. from Brown University and was a visiting lecturer. I was impressed with how nice the students, faculty, and staff were to me at my interview at Carroll College and am happy that those first impressions have held up over the subsequent nine years. The Department of Political Science and International Relations is most definitely a happy home for me.
I like all the classes I teach but some have required more legwork to prepare. One of these is Montana Politics which I teach every other year during the legislative session. I had to develop expertise about state politics on the job – which has been lots of fun! I am now a frequent resource on Montana politics for the media. This work led me to have the honor to be invited by Jonathan Motl, the former Commissioner of Political Practices, to evaluate the ethics of a controversial election study conducted in Montana by academics from Stanford and Dartmouth Universities. The report touched on important ethical questions for the political science discipline and received national attention.
Another course I developed at Carroll College is Health Politics and Policy. Many students from health sciences, nursing, and the natural sciences join with political science students in the course. It’s a wonderful experience for me to see the cross-pollination of ideas coming from students from a range of disciplinarian perspectives. The class is an outgrowth from my interests in graduate school when I researched extensively in health and housing policy. I have had the opportunity in Montana to become involved with activism in healthcare policy including supporting the strengthening of consumer rights in the appeals process in case of insurer claim denials and supporting the passage of mental health parity legislation in the state. This is the fifth year I have served on the board of directors of the Mountain Health Co-op, a consumer-oriented and operated non-profit health insurance company, which was created with the mission to promote member engagement and provide access to quality healthcare.
I am finishing a book provisionally titled Building the Welfare State: How Republican Ideas Shaped Democratic Policies which reviews a century of housing and health policy and develops an explanation for the historical trajectory of social policy development in the United States. The extreme complexity of social programs in the United States is a product of partisanship and polarization. Ideas matter in the sense that politicians usually wish to create programs that appear consistent with market ideals and try to avoid establishing programs that critics will label as socialistic – an aim that is often elusive.
Carroll encourages faculty entrepreneurship which has given me many opportunities to engage across campus with many colleagues. I have had the pleasure to participate on panels with professors in departments such as History, Languages and Literature, Theology, and Communications. I enjoy co-directing, with Charlotte Jones, the Sister Annette Moran faculty colloquium which features faculty presentations of their scholarly work and serving for many years on the library committee. My newest challenge for next semester is to teach a class for freshmen, the Lost Kingdom of King Arthur, which is one of the newly designed core classes intended to introduce students to college writing and the liberal arts. It is a privilege for me to teach small classes every day at a college inculcated in the liberal arts tradition in front of enthusiastic students – that is the best part of the job of being a professor!