Graham G. Dodds, PhD

Professor Dodds is an expert on the politics of the United States.  He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, MAs from Penn and UC-Irvine, and a BA from Columbia.  Originally from Philadelphia, he has worked at the Brookings Institution and for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Much of Professor Dodds’s research concerns American political development and the U.S. presidency. He is the author of three academic books on those subjects: Mass Pardons in America explores the use of amnesties after rebellions, The Unitary Presidency analyzes the controversial constitutional theory of the unitary executive, and Take Up Your Pen examines the evolution of executive orders and other unilateral presidential directives. He also studies the use of governmental apologies for political reconciliation, and he has published dozens of journal articles and chapters in edited volumes on various aspects of American politics, US-Canada relations, comparative politics, and political theory. 

Professor Dodds is an award-winning teacher and has conducted teaching workshops for other instructors. At the graduate level, he teaches a seminar on political leadership and decision-making. At the undergraduate level, he has taught a survey of western political theory and an introduction to political science, he often teaches mid-level courses on American politics and the U.S. presidency, and he teaches advanced seminars on American political thought, American political development, Congress and the legislative process, law and society, and causality in political science. He has also taught at Penn and the Institut d'études politiques (Sciences Po) in Grenoble, France.

Professor Dodds has been interviewed nearly six hundred times by journalists in major news outlets (print, TV, online, and radio).  To request an interview, please contact Concordia’s Media Relations office.