Rate My Professor Sean Westwood

Sean Westwood is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, a position he has held since 2021, following his tenure as Assistant Professor from 2015 to 2021. Prior to joining Dartmouth, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics from 2014 to 2015. Westwood also directed the Undergraduate Program in Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth from 2017 to 2018. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. and M.A. from Stanford University in 2014, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2006, and a B.A. from the University of Nevada in 2006.

Westwood's research specializes in political behavior, public opinion, affective polarization, partisanship, and their impacts on democratic processes. He directs the Polarization Research Lab and is a Starr Foundation National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His influential scholarship includes the book The Impression of Influence: Legislator Communication, Representation, and Democratic Accountability (Princeton University Press, 2014, with Justin Grimmer and Solomon Messing) and numerous high-impact articles. Key publications feature 'The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States' (Annual Review of Political Science, 2019, with Shanto Iyengar et al., over 4,400 citations), 'Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization' (American Journal of Political Science, 2015, with Shanto Iyengar, over 3,400 citations), 'The tie that divides: Cross-national evidence of the primacy of partyism' (European Journal of Political Research, 2017), 'Does affective polarization undermine democratic norms or accountability? Maybe not' (American Journal of Political Science, 2023, with David E. Broockman and Joshua L. Kalla), and 'Current research overstates American support for political violence' (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022). His work has garnered widespread attention in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. Westwood has received major awards including the Friedman Fellowship (2021), Carnegie Junior Fellowship (2020), Roberta Sigel Junior Award (2015), Nathan Maccoby Award (2015), and Burke Dissertation Award (Stanford, 2015). He has delivered invited talks at institutions like the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, San Diego, and served on committees for the American Political Science Association and Midwestern Political Science Association.