Rate My Professor Jeremy Bailey

Jeremy D. Bailey served as Professor and Sanders Chair in Law and Liberty in the Department of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma from 2021 to 2025. During this tenure, he directed the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, overseeing three endowed tenure-stream faculty lines, an academic major and minor in Constitutional Studies, and a civic discussion space, while securing over $525,000 in gifts. He co-chaired the Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Freedom of Speech and Inquiry, contributing to the university's adoption of the Chicago Statement on Freedom of Expression in 2022. Bailey also served as a member of the Oklahoma Judicial Nominating Commission from 2023 to 2025 and chaired search committees for key positions. Prior to OU, he was Professor of Political Science and in the Honors College at the University of Houston (2016-2021), where he directed the Phronesis minor and the Tocqueville Forum, and held earlier positions at Duquesne University and Eastern Washington University. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Rhodes College in 1996 and a Ph.D. from Boston College in 2003, co-winning the American Political Science Association's E.E. Schattschneider Award for the best dissertation in American government and politics.

A scholar of American political thought and constitutional development, Bailey focuses on the early republic figures Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, as well as controversies surrounding executive power. His books include Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power (Cambridge University Press, 2007), The Contested Removal Power, 1789-2010 (University Press of Kansas, 2013, co-authored with David Alvis and F. Flagg Taylor), James Madison and Constitutional Imperfection (Cambridge University Press, 2015), The Idea of Presidential Representation: An Intellectual and Political History (University Press of Kansas, 2019), and American Presidency: Core Documents (Ashbrook Press, 2018). Key articles appear in American Political Science Review, History of Political Thought, Review of Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and others. Bailey co-edited American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture (2019-2023) and serves as co-editor of the American Political Thought book series at University Press of Kansas. He has received the Provost’s Core Excellence in Teaching Award (University of Houston, 2014) and various fellowships, including Thomas P. O’Neill Fellowships at Boston College.