Who We Are

John Geer

Vanderbilt University
Department of Political Science

John G. Geer is currently Vice Provost of Academic and Strategic Affairs. Geer earned his PhD from Princeton University (1986), securing his BA from Franklin and Marshall College (1980). Geer has published 5 books and over 20 articles on presidential politics and elections, and recently served as Editor of The Journal of Politics (2005-2009). His most recent book is In Defense of Negativity: Attacks Ads in Presidential Campaigns published by the University of Chicago Press, which won the Goldsmith Book prize from Harvard University (2008). He has provided extensive commentary in the news media on politics, including live nation wide interviews for FOX, CNN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, and NPR. Geer has also written op-ed pieces for Politico, The Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. His lecturing has earned him a number of awards at Vanderbilt, including the “Squirrel Award,” the 2004 Birkby Prize, the 2005 Jeffrey Nordhaus Award, and the 2009 Ellen Greg Ingalls Award for teaching excellence. Geer is currently working on a series of projects that looks at the news media’s coverage of attack advertising and how negativity may help voters make better choices.

Lynn Vavreck

UCLA
Political Science & Communication Studies

Lynn Vavreck is a professor of political science and communication studies at UCLA and a contributing columnist to The Upshot at The New York Times.  She teaches courses on and writes about campaigns, elections, and public opinion. Professor Vavreck has published four books, including The Message Matters, which Stanley Greenberg called “required reading” for presidential candidates, and The Gamble, described by Nate Silver as the “definitive account” of the 2012 election.  The National Science Foundation and the American Political Science Association have supported her research. Professor Vavreck has served on the advisory boards of the British and American National Election Studies and is the co-founder of the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project.  She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Rochester and held previous appointments at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and The White House.  In 2014, she hosted Hillary Clinton at UCLA’s Luskin Lecture on Thought Leadership and in 2015 she was named an inaugural Andrew F. Carnegie Fellow.

You can follow Lynn Vavreck on Twitter at @VAVRECK. She writes regularly for The Upshot at The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/upshot).