Rate My Professor Alin Fumurescu

Alin Fumurescu was an Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston from 2020 until his passing in 2025. He joined the department as an Assistant Professor in 2014, following visiting professorships at Tulane University and Yale University. Fumurescu earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University Bloomington in 2011, with a dissertation titled "Compromise and Representation—A Split History of Early Modernity," advised by Aurelian Craiutu. This work received the American Political Science Association Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in political philosophy in 2013. He also held a B.A. from Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

As Founding Director of the Tocqueville Forum on American Ideas and Institutions at the University of Houston since 2015, Fumurescu organized significant events, including a conference on the 300th anniversary of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters in 2021 and hosted renowned scholars for lectures on American constitutionalism. His research focused on political theory, encompassing the history of ideas, early modernity, political and self-representation, American political thought, and compromise. Major publications include Compromise: A Political and Philosophical History (Cambridge University Press, 2013), nominated among CHOICE's top 25 outstanding academic titles of 2013; Compromise and the American Founding: The Quest for the People’s Two Bodies (Cambridge University Press, 2019); and the co-edited Foundations of American Political Thought: Readings and Commentary (with Anna Marisa Schön, Cambridge University Press, 2021). Peer-reviewed articles feature "Shaming in a Shameless World: The Broken Dialectic of the Self" (Political Research Quarterly, 2023) and "The People’s Two Bodies: An Alternative Perspective on Populism and Elitism" (Political Research Quarterly, 2018). Additional contributions appeared in the European Journal of Political Theory and The European Legacy. Fumurescu held the 2022–2023 Faculty Fellowship at Tulane University’s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs and the 2024–2025 Elizabeth D. Rockwell Center Faculty Fellowship at the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs, supporting edited volumes on fanaticism and the implications of artificial intelligence and new media for political thought. His scholarship advanced understandings of compromise, populism, and representation, while he mentored undergraduate and graduate students.