CCPS Staff
David Barker
Professor, Government
dbarker@american.edu
David C. Barker is Professor of Government and the current Director of the Social and Economic Sciences Division at the National Science Foundation. He was previously Director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies (2017-2024), where he co-founded the Program on Legislative Negotiation and the inter-university New Perspectives in Studies of American Governance program. Earlier in his career, he directed the the Institute for Social Research at California State University-Sacramento (2012-2017), where he founded CALSPEAKS Opinion Research, and he served as a professor of Political Science and Religious Studies at University of Pittsburgh (1999-2013). He has also held visiting appointments at Science Po in Paris, the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and the University of Sydney.
Professor Barker studies American political behavior, psychology, and governance. He has served as principal investigator on over 50 externally funded research projects (totaling more than $19 million), and he has authored/coauthored over 80 publications — including four books: Rushed to Judgment [2002; Columbia University Press], Representing Red and Blue [2012; Oxford University Press], One Nation, Two Realities [2019; Oxford University Press], and The Politics of Truth in Polarized America [2021; Oxford University Press].
Ron Elving
Acting Director, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies
elving@american.edu
Ron Elving is an executive in residence, acting director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies and professorial lecturer in the Department of Government in SPA. He had previously been an adjunct professor in the School of Communication and at George Mason University.
He is also an online, on-air and podcast contributor for NPR, where he was Senior Washington Editor from 1999 to 2015. He was previously the political editor for USA Today and for Congressional Quarterly.
He came to Washington in 1984 as a Congressional Fellow with the American Political Science Association and worked for two years as staff in the House and Senate before joining CQ in 1987. Prior to that he had been a reporter and state capital bureau chief for The Milwaukee Journal.
Amy Larrabee Cotz
CCPS Fellow
Associate Editor, The Correspondence of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore Project
alarrabeecotz@american.edu
Amy Larrabee Cotz joined CCPS as an associate editor of the Correspondence of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore and CCPS fellow in May 2021. A historian and a documentary editor, Amy spent the past nine years at the Dolley Madison Digital Edition, an award-winning project at the University of Virginia. Before that she researched the lives of enslaved Black Americans at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Montpelier Foundation.
Jan Leighley
Research Director, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies
leighley@american.edu
Jan E. Leighley's research and teaching interests focus on American political behavior, voter turnout, election laws, and racial/ethnic political behavior. She has published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, among others. She is a co-author with Jonathan Nagler, NYU, of Who Votes Now? Demographics, Issues, Inequality and Turnout in the United States (Princeton: 2014). Previous books include Strength in Numbers? The Political Mobilization of Racial and Ethnic Minorities, published by Princeton University Press, and Mass Media and Politics: A Social Science Perspective. She served as editor (with Kim Quaile Hill) of the American Journal of Political Science from 2000-2004, as editor of The Journal of Politics with Bill Mishler from 2009-2014, and as interim editor of the American Journaisl of Political Science from 2018-2019. She also served as Interim Senior Associate Dean in the School of Public Affairs from 2012-2014. During 2020-2021, she served as Program Manager of the Accountable Institutions and Behavior Program at the National Science Foundation.
Mark Tenenbaum
Managing Editor, Congress & the Presidency Journal
mt2082a@american.edu
MEET MARK TENENBAUM
Mark Tenenbaum assumed the role of Managing Editor for Congress & the Presidency journal in Fall 2024. Mark is a PhD student at American University and his research agenda centers on American political behavior, with particular interests in religion and politics and racial and ethnic politics. He is also the Director of Research at Kitces, one of the leading sources of information and research on financial planning in the financial services industry. Mark has a BA in economics and politics from the University of Rhode Island and worked for nearly a decade as a financial advisor for a Rhode Island-based investment advisory firm.