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Carol M. Swain

A Bold New Voice for the Issues of our Times

Carol M. Swain (B.A., Roanoke College, 1983; M.A., Virginia Polytechnic & State Univ., 1984; Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1989; MSL, Yale, 2000; member of Phi Beta Kappa).

Carol M. Swain has lived the American Dream. Married at age sixteen and one of twelve children raised in extreme rural poverty in Bedford, Virginia, she has risen from being a high school dropout with a GED to becoming a widely acclaimed University professor. She is currently Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University, where she was a tenured professor prior to coming to Vanderbilt. She received a B.A. from Roanoke College and M.A. from Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in 2000 was awarded a M.L.S from Yale Law School. She is a foundation member of the Virginia Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. She is a member of the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Professor Swain has authored award-winning books including Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Harvard University Press, 1993, 1995: reprinted University Press of America, 2006). Black Faces won the Woodrow Wilson prize for the best book published in the U. S. on government, politics, or international affairs in 1994, and was cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in Johnson v. DeGrandy, 512 U.S. 997 (1994) and twice by Justice Sandra Day O' Connor in Georgia V. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. (2003).

Her more recent books include The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (Cambridge University Press, 2002) that was nominated by Cambridge University Press for a Pulitzer Prize, Contemporary Voices of White Nations (Cambridge University Press, 2003, edited with Russ Nieli), and most recently Debating Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2007). She is also the editor of an anthology of student essays, Race Versus Class: The New Affirmative Action Debate (University of America Press, 1996)

She is widely recognized as an expert on race relations, immigration, black leadership, and evangelical politics. Her media appearances include BBC Radio, NPR, CNN's Andersen Cooper, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Fox's Hannity, PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Washington Journal, ABC's Headline News, to name just a few. Her op-eds have appeared in numerous newspapers. These include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and USA Today. She is also a political blogger for The Huffington Post.