Rate My Professor Boris Shor

Boris Shor is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston, holding the Pauline Yelderman Chair (2024-2027) and a joint appointment as Associate Professor at the Hobby School of Public Affairs (since 2024). He joined the University of Houston in 2016 as Assistant Professor, promoted to Associate in 2019. Earlier positions include Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgetown University (2014-2016) and Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago’s Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies (2005-2014), along with visiting scholar roles at UC Berkeley and Princeton. Shor received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2006—dissertation: “The Consequences of Institutions: The Political Geography of Federal Expenditures”—and his B.A. from Princeton University.

His research specializes in American politics, focusing on elite partisan polarization, state legislative ideology and representation, electoral systems, and policy areas like health care and climate change. Shor leads the American Legislatures Project, offering ideology measures for all U.S. state legislators from 1993 to the present. Notable publications include “The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures” (with Nolan McCarty, American Political Science Review, 2011; 2025 APSA State Politics Section Jewell Enduring Contribution Award), “Two Decades of Polarization in American State Legislatures” (with Nolan McCarty, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, 2022), “Can Pigou at the Polls Stop Us Melting the Poles?” (with Soren T. Anderson and Ioana Marinescu, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2023), and “Ideology, Party, and Opinion: Explaining Individual Legislator ACA Implementation Votes in the States” (State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 2018). Shor has garnered awards such as the 2016 APSA Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award and Legislative Studies Section CQ Press Award (both for “Unequal Incomes, Ideology and Gridlock”), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Fellowship (2011-2013), and grants exceeding $900,000 from NSF, Russell Sage Foundation, and others. He serves as Editor of Research & Politics (2025–), on APSA section councils, and various university committees including the Executive Committee of UH Political Science.