Rate My Professor Cas Mudde

Cas Mudde serves as the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor of International Affairs and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs. He is also Professor II (20%) at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Right-Wing Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and Patron of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). A leading political scientist specializing in comparative politics, Mudde obtained his MA in Political Science in 1993 and PhD in 1998 from Leiden University, supervised by the late Peter Mair. Prior to joining UGA in 2012, he held tenure-track positions at Central European University in Hungary, the University of Edinburgh in the UK, and the University of Antwerp in Belgium, where he founded and chaired the Department of Political Science. His career includes temporary and visiting roles at institutions such as the University of Oregon, University of Notre Dame, DePauw University, Institute for Human Sciences (Austria), Berlin Social Science Center (Germany), Charles University (Czech Republic), University of Amsterdam, Cornell University, and Rutgers University.

Mudde's research explores how liberal democracies can protect themselves from political threats like extremism, populism, and Euroscepticism without eroding their foundational principles, with a focus on Europe and North America. He is renowned as the foremost expert on the far right in Western democracies and European politics. His extensive publication record features influential books such as "The Far Right Today" (Polity, 2019), "The Far Right in America" (Routledge, 2018), "Populism: A Very Short Introduction" (with Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Oxford University Press, 2017), "Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe" (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and "The Ideology of the Extreme Right" (Manchester University Press, 2000). Highly cited articles include "The Populist Zeitgeist" (2004, over 10,000 citations) and "Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism" (2013). Mudde has earned numerous accolades, including the Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research (2008), Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (2015), Leonard Shapiro Memorial Prize Lecture (2019), Belgian Professor Chair (Francqui Foundation, 2017-18), and membership in the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022). He co-founded the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism & Democracy, formerly co-edited the European Journal of Political Research, and serves on several editorial boards. Additionally, he engages in public discourse through op-eds, lectures at forums like the European Parliament, and initiatives such as film screenings on political cinema at UGA.