Jeffrey K Tulis

Jeffrey K Tulis

  • Professor of Government
  • Professor of Law

Faculty Profile: Jeffrey K Tulis

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Biography

Jeffrey K. Tulis is Professor of Government in the College of Liberal Arts, his primary appointment at The University of Texas at Austin.  He is also Professor of Law in the School of Law, and Professor of Communication Studies in the College of Communication.

Professor Tulis's interests bridge the fields of political theory and American politics, including more specifically, American political development, constitutional theory, political philosophy and the American presidency.  His publications include The Presidency in the Constitutional Order (LSU, 1981; Transaction, 2010), The Constitutional Presidency (Johns Hopkins, 2009), The Limits of Constitutional Democracy (Princeton, 2010), and The Rhetorical Presidency, (Princeton, 1987, Princeton Classics edition, 2017). Four collections of essays on The Rhetorical Presidency with responses by Tulis have been published, including a special double issue of Critical Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Politics and Society, (2007), where his book is described as "one of the two or three most important and perceptive works written by a political scientist in the twentieth century." It received the American Political Science Association's Legacy Award in 2018.  In 2022, Bates College awarded him its Sesquicentennial Prize  given to an alumna/us for a significant academic, artistic or scientific achievement.

His most recent book (co-authored with Nicole Mellow) is Legacies of Losing in American Politics (Chicago, 2018). Two symposiums on this book have been published -- in the LSE USAPP American Politics and Policy Blog in 2019, and in the journal Political Theory in 2020.

Since 2016, Tulis has been regularly writing for the public sphere, including essays and articles in: The AtlanticWashington PostThe BulwarkPublic SeminarThe Constitutionalist, and the LSE American Politics and Policy Blog.

He has served as President of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association. He received the President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Texas. He has held research fellowships from NEH, ACLS, Olin Foundation, Harvard Law School, and the Mellon Preceptorship at Princeton University, where he taught before moving to Texas. He has held visiting positions at Notre Dame and Harvard. He has served as associate chair of the Department of Government from 1989-2001 and was acting chair during 1992-93. and for part of each year between 1989 and 2001. During the academic year 2008-09, he was a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. During Spring 2016, he was a Dahrendorf Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jeffrey Tulis recently served as President of the University of Texas at Austin chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha of Texas, 2017-2022.

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