- Dept. of Political Science
University of Maine
5754 North Stevens Hall
Orono, ME 04469-5754
Robert W. Glover
University of Maine, Political Science, Department Member
- University of Maine, Honors College, Department Memberadd
- Globalization, International Studies, Politics and Literature, Political Theory, Agonistic Pluralism, Political Science, and 32 moreSocial Sciences, Critical Theory, Intellectual History, International Relations, Democracy and Cyber-Democracy Theory and Practice, International Relations Theory, Human Rights, Politics of Recognition, Political Philosophy, Utopianism, Emotions And Political Theory, William Connolly, Bonnie Honig, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Marxism, Post-Marxism, Democratic Theory, Radical Democracy, Liberalism, Noam Chomsky, Leo Strauss, Slavoj Žižek, Critical Pedagogy, Pedagogy, Cosmopolitanism, John Rawls, Citizenship, Immigration Status & Nationality, International Ethics, Democratic Participation, Comparative Politics, and John Dryzekedit
- Robert W. Glover is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Honors, a joint appointment in the Department of ... moreRobert W. Glover is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Honors, a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the Honors College at the University of Maine. His research focuses generally on democratic theory, political engagement, and the politics of immigration. He also serves as a co-director of the Maine Chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, a national organization that connects academic research to policymakers, citizens, and the media.
Since 2016, Glover has been an Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation (ENACT) Faculty Fellow at the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University. This national program fosters civic engagement among college students by teaching them how to work with advocacy organizations, legislators and legislative staff members to impact state policy.
Professor Glover has published widely in academic journals such as Political Studies, Philosophy & Social Criticism, The Journal of Political Science Education, and Honors in Practice. He has also contributed numerous chapters to edited volumes. Professor Glover co-edited a book (with Daniel Tagliarina at Utica College) on teaching and learning in political science, entitled Teaching Politics Beyond the Book: Film, Texts, and New Media in the Classroom (Continuum/ Bloomsbury Press). In addition, he has recently co-edited a book series, Honors Education in Transition, (Rowman and Littlefield) with Katherine O’Flaherty from Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, examining various dimensions of the future of honors education.
In 2015, Professor Glover was selected as a finalist for the Ernest A. Lynton Award, a national honor given by the New England Resource Council for Higher Education (NERCHE) and the Center for Engaged Democracy (CED). This award recognizes an early career faculty member who has been innovative in connecting his or her teaching, research, and service to community engagement. He was also named one the Irish Echo Newspaper’s “Top 40 Under 40,” an honor given to Irish-Americans under the age of 40 who have made a unique contribution to their professions and communities. He is a winner of the Donald Harward Faculty Award for Service-Learning Excellence, an honor given annually by Maine Campus Compact to exceptional educators who make “public service an integral part of their teaching.” In 2009, he was awarded the Northeastern Political Science Association/McWilliams Prize for Best Political Theory Paper. In addition, his dissertation was nominated for the American Political Science Association Leo Strauss Award, awarded annually for the best dissertation in political theory.edit
The landscape of American higher education has changed in notable ways in recent decades. One essential and defining feature of contemporary higher education is the growth of honors education. Honors education offers a means to student... more
The landscape of American higher education has changed in notable ways in recent decades. One essential and defining feature of contemporary higher education is the growth of honors education. Honors education offers a means to student self-development, allowing high-performing students a distinctive venue in which they can pursue self-cultivation through expanded educational opportunities. This edited series engages a series of important and timely questions related to the contemporary state of honors education and what promises and challenges exist in its future development. The first volume in the series engages with the growth in honors education generally, examining the culture around honors education and the challenges and opportunities created by its rapid growth. The second volume in the series turns to curriculum, exploring the various ways that honors educators pursue curricular innovations while navigating the tension between reverence for the past and pedagogical dynamism. The final volume considers how honors education can face larger structural dynamics in higher education—the push for online education, calls to demonstrate " return on investment, " and market-based pressures to focus attention on specific fields and skills. Throughout, the series draws upon the insights of seasoned veterans of honors education and new voices to actively consider the future of this important and rapidly growing educational movement.
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While honors education has become ubiquitous in American higher education, this transformation has happened without systematic attempts to align what honors means across institutions and absent a universally agreed upon definition of what... more
While honors education has become ubiquitous in American higher education, this transformation has happened without systematic attempts to align what honors means across institutions and absent a universally agreed upon definition of what honors is and what it might aspire to be in the future. This edited series examines the proliferation of honors programs and colleges in American higher education through investigations that are grounded in the present, while turning a keen and perceptive eye to the future.
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Continuity and Innovation in Honors College Curricula is the second volume in the edited series Honors Education in Transition, which examines the proliferation of honors programs and colleges in American higher education. While honors... more
Continuity and Innovation in Honors College Curricula is the second volume in the edited series Honors Education in Transition, which examines the proliferation of honors programs and colleges in American higher education. While honors education has become ubiquitous in American higher education, this transformation has happened without systematic attempts to align what honors means across institutions, and absent a universally agreed upon definitions of what honors is and what it might aspire to be in the future. This generates possibility and flexibility, while also creating rather serious challenges.
This book examines dynamic attempts to think creatively about curriculum, a hallmark of honors in higher education. The authors document and discuss innovative attempts ranging from service-learning to international education to innovative ways to blend disciplinary models of pedagogy with honors teaching. Throughout, their investigations are grounded in the present while turning a keen and perceptive eye to the future.
This book examines dynamic attempts to think creatively about curriculum, a hallmark of honors in higher education. The authors document and discuss innovative attempts ranging from service-learning to international education to innovative ways to blend disciplinary models of pedagogy with honors teaching. Throughout, their investigations are grounded in the present while turning a keen and perceptive eye to the future.
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Present Successes and Future Challenges in Honors Education is the first volume in an edited series examining the proliferation of honors programs and colleges in American higher education. While honors education has become ubiquitous in... more
Present Successes and Future Challenges in Honors Education is the first volume in an edited series examining the proliferation of honors programs and colleges in American higher education. While honors education has become ubiquitous in American higher education, this transformation has happened without systematic attempts to align what honors means across institutions, and absent a universally agreed upon definitions of what honors is and what it might aspire to be in the future. This generates possibility and flexibility, while also creating rather serious challenges.
The contributors document the decades-long structural transformations that led to the rise of honors education while also providing perspective on the present and future challenges in honors education. The chapters address such issues as ensuring equity in honors, how we ought to think about student success and frame this for external stakeholders, and how the diffusion of honors-inspired pedagogies elsewhere in the university forces us to rethink our mission and our day-to-day practice. Throughout, their investigations are grounded in the present while turning a keen and perceptive eye to the future.
The contributors document the decades-long structural transformations that led to the rise of honors education while also providing perspective on the present and future challenges in honors education. The chapters address such issues as ensuring equity in honors, how we ought to think about student success and frame this for external stakeholders, and how the diffusion of honors-inspired pedagogies elsewhere in the university forces us to rethink our mission and our day-to-day practice. Throughout, their investigations are grounded in the present while turning a keen and perceptive eye to the future.
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This is a link to a series of course lecture "podcasts" looking chronologically at the works of George Orwell and utilizing his work as a lens to think about 20th century political life.
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While referenda can often result in outcomes that restrict rather than expand individual rights, several states endorsed same-sex marriage at the ballot box in 2012. After campaigns that promoted conversation and reflection, both Maine... more
While referenda can often result in outcomes that restrict rather than expand individual rights, several states endorsed same-sex marriage at the ballot box in 2012. After campaigns that promoted conversation and reflection, both Maine and Washington endorsed same-sex marriage. This article examines how these two states’ LGBT-rights groups achieved marriage equality and argues that the campaigns demonstrate the potentially significant role of affect and mutuality in deliberative exchange, and the power of intensive engagement, allies, and messaging emphasizing familial love and commitment. These cases offer important insights for future issue campaigns and the steps they take to engage with those they are trying to persuade and mobilize. The Maine and Washington cases also offer important empirical insights regarding the potential for affect as a component of deliberative democratic discourse.
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Citizenship in an age of “human rights” presents us with certain conceptual and practical challenges. A universalistic framework rests uneasily beside a mode of rights protection and membership which has historically been rooted in the... more
Citizenship in an age of “human rights” presents us with certain conceptual and practical challenges. A universalistic framework rests uneasily beside a mode of rights protection and membership which has historically been rooted in the parochial institutions of the nation-state. Nowhere is this clearer than in recent immigrant activism and political resistance, several illustrative cases of which I examine here. In the instances I examine, immigrant activists not only defy easy categorization; they explode the seeming coherence of these categories altogether. These closer examinations reveal the paradox, the Derridean “undecidability,” inherent in the immigrant as a political subject in relation to either the nation-state or universal human rights. Far from constituting a political “crisis,” I argue that such paradox opens a moment of possibility—for a radically democratic, agonistic politics that defies inherited dogmas and categorizations. However, for the world’s millions of migrants and asylees, this is also a moment of urgency, something we ought not forget. It is this combination of possibility and urgency which compels us to cultivate a less hostile political orientation towards undecidability, not only for the sake of migrants and asylees, but to ensure modern democracies truly capable of regeneration and change.
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IR theory has been grappling with a new set of tools which originate in the study of the natural world, specifically physics and biology. We call these tools “complex systems analysis” or in its more conceptual variant, “complexity... more
IR theory has been grappling with a new set of tools which originate in the study of the natural world, specifically physics and biology. We call these tools “complex systems analysis” or in its more conceptual variant, “complexity theory.” Complexity is not a unified theory as such, but rather an “emerging approach or framework” drawn from a variety of sources. Proponents argue that IR can achieve better understanding of the world utilizing conceptual lenses attuned to the interaction of large numbers of variables and actors, interacting in a non-linear (and hence, less predictable) fashion. The remainder of this article will examine the rudiments of complexity theory, as well its promise a conceptual tool in understanding international relations. In particular, I will focus upon whether complexity theory constitutes a framework compatible with existing IR theories, or a fundamental and incommensurable challenge to the present theoretical landscape of IR.
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Extended Review of Latha Varadarajan's The Domestic Abroad: Diasporas in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Recently, political scientists and political theorists have delved into a rich and rapidly growing literature in cognitive neuroscience that examines the interrelation between reason and emotion, cognition and affect. A number of... more
Recently, political scientists and political theorists have delved into a rich and rapidly growing literature in cognitive neuroscience that examines the interrelation between reason and emotion, cognition and affect. A number of political theorists, inspired by this literature, have begun mapping the affective virtues and values needed to sustain just, legitimate, and other-regarding political decisions. Breaking with dominant rationalist theories, these works construct normative conceptions of the ideal affective-cognitive dispositions required for democratic citizenship. Here, I critically examine three such conceptions: based on sympathy, empathy, and “agonistic respect” respectively. I argue that significant points of convergence exist but presently risk being overlooked, potentially to the peril of shared practical goals such as democratic legitimacy and concern for the Other. Nevertheless, I claim that agonistic pluralism remains the most promising of these articulations in two critical respects. First, an agonistic democratic orientation remains the most viable democratic vehicle for engaging the perspectives of those we deem to be dogmatic, intolerant, and unreasonable. Second, the virtues espoused by agonism offer promise in engaging nascent and emergent political identities, and opening democratic spaces to previously marginalized and hitherto silenced claims of injustice and oppression. Despite this, existing proponents of agonism do a disservice to these goals by speaking a dense, esoteric language that blurs the practical imperatives of such an orientation. I conclude by initiating a call for agonistic pluralism to move in the direction of a more tangible “public philosophy.”
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Democratic theory has “gone global.” Numerous recent works by insightful democratic theorists have sought to understand contemporary trends which propel democracy above and beyond the traditional nation-state paradigm. In addition, these... more
Democratic theory has “gone global.” Numerous recent works by insightful democratic theorists have sought to understand contemporary trends which propel democracy above and beyond the traditional nation-state paradigm. In addition, these theorists aim to construct a conception of democracy beyond borders towards which the global community ought to strive. In this paper, I focus upon three such articulations: David Held’s conception of federated cosmopolitanism, John Dryzek’s vision of a deliberative global politics, and James Bohman’s recent discussion of a transnational, differentiated democracy across dêmoi. While broadly sympathetic to the aspirations of these thinkers, I fear that their sophisticated treatments harbor over-generalizations and project a fictive ideal of linear transition onto contemporary political developments that are complex, contingent and, for the moment at least, indeterminate. Yet I do not wish to imply that we should dispense with aspirations for modes of democratic claims-making which exceed the nation-state. Instead, I articulate a sketch of an alternative model of global democratic empowerment, rooted in the insights of agonistic pluralism. I argue that this articulation is better-suited than its Held-ian, Dryzek-ian, and Bohman-ian predecessors to engage and endure the undecidability, contingency, and ambiguity found within contemporary world politics.
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Since at least the end of the Cold War, there has been a striking return to viewing migration as a security issue, within both Western policy and our scholarly inquiry. However, it is clear that this policy framing technique can often... more
Since at least the end of the Cold War, there has been a striking return to viewing migration as a security issue, within both Western policy and our scholarly inquiry. However, it is clear that this policy framing technique can often leave migrant populations vulnerable, threatened, and criminalized. Scholars within the Copenhagen School and critical security studies have provided an analytical apparatus to analyze this trend with their articulation of "securitization.” However, currently, the Copenhagen School largely neglects the fact that securitization is often forcefully challenged by an activist counter-narrative. Such actors reject immigration’s securitization and actively work to undermine this framing. Drawing upon field research with immigrant and refugee activist groups in the United States, I examine the response of these organizations to this discursive re-framing. Furthermore, I suggest ways in which an exchange between the international relations scholars and immigrant rights activists can broaden our understanding of the securitization of migration, and develop a richer account than is currently offered by the Copenhagen School.
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Amidst contemporary economic instability, intellectuals and policymakers from diverse ideological backgrounds have called for a restructuring of capitalism’s institutional form.Yet this is a long-term project, involving not merely... more
Amidst contemporary economic instability, intellectuals and policymakers from diverse ideological backgrounds have called for a restructuring of capitalism’s institutional form.Yet this is a long-term project, involving not merely rebuilding the beleaguered financial sector and job creation. It will also involve attitudinal changes with regard to consumption, spending, and debt. In light of this, our society has opened an important intellectual window with regard to how we conceive of the market-driven vicissitudes of capitalism, and political science educators have inherited a tremendous pedagogical responsibility in enabling their students to conceptualize such changes. Building upon recent research in cognitive and educational psychology and our own classroom experiences, we argue here that utopian socialist thought potentially offers us a way to destabilize and de-center our settled understandings with regard to the proper economic order, an essential starting point to the post-crisis rebuilding.
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Abstract: Political science is a challenging field, particularly when it comes to undergraduate teaching. If we are to engage in something more than uncritical ideological “instruction, it demands from the student a willingness to... more
Abstract: Political science is a challenging field, particularly when it comes to undergraduate teaching. If we are to engage in something more than uncritical ideological “instruction, it demands from the student a willingness to approach alien political ideas with intellectual generosity. Yet students within introductory classes often harbor inherited notions of what the ideal political system ought to be. This attachment to the proper meaning of core political ideas may stultify their consideration of alternative formulations of these concepts. In a related vein, recent research within educational and cognitive psychology examines “automatic thinking” as a prevailing dimension of human cognition. In many instances, researchers find that seemingly thoughtful activity actually draws upon long-settled previous learning so routine and scripted that “true” thinking becomes unnecessary. In order to gain new knowledge, as well as a critical and reflexive understanding of oneself and others, recent research in this vein has advocated the value of exposure to ideas and experience which destabilize these understandings. In order to apply these insights in relation to our field this study is an attempt to offer political science educators: 1) a more precise sense of how such “automatic thinking” operates at a cognitive psychological level, 2) descriptive empirical documentation of what pre-existing frames are widespread within the American undergraduate community, and 3) a sketch of ways in which educators might confront “automatic thinking” in the classroom.
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The status of citizenship and the rights extended to non-citizens are among the most contentious and hotly-debated political issues in numerous Western polities. Some scholars, most notably Seyla Benhabib, have deemed the contemporary... more
The status of citizenship and the rights extended to non-citizens are among the most contentious and hotly-debated political issues in numerous Western polities. Some scholars, most notably Seyla Benhabib, have deemed the contemporary changes a ‘disaggregation of rights claims’, in which the interplay between ideals of particularism and universalism lead to an ‘unbundling’ of civil, political, and social rights with formal national membership. Yet this theoretical framing harbors deficiencies which complicate our understanding of the contemporary politics of immigration. In this piece, I critically examine this account to show both its theoretical shortcomings and the incomplete explanations to which these deficiencies lead. In particular, I focus on the case of the 2006 protests in response to restrictionist immigration reform in the United States. Furthermore, I suggest ways in which an agonistic pluralist approach to citizenship and immigration issues provides us a richer account of the political negotiations underway, as well as a means to re-conceptualize democratic voice and, at least in part, to begin democratically legitimating borders and access to political membership.
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In recent years a growing number of democratic theorists have proposed ways to increase citizen engagement, while channeling those democratic energies in positive directions and away from systematic marginalization, exclusion, and... more
In recent years a growing number of democratic theorists have proposed ways to increase citizen engagement, while channeling those democratic energies in positive directions
and away from systematic marginalization, exclusion, and intolerance. One novel answer is provided by a strain of democratic theory known as agonistic pluralism, which valorizes adversarial engagement and recognizes the marginalizing tendencies implicit in drives to consensus and stability. However, the divergences between competing variants of agonistic pluralism remain largely under-developed or unrecognized. In this piece, I address this shortcoming, examining these strains of agonism around the constraints placed upon democratic discourse. I argue that the ‘associative agonism’ of theorists such as Bonnie Honig and William Connolly offers the best means for cultivating virtues necessary to revitalize a contentious democratic politics which also fosters receptivity to pluralism and difference.
and away from systematic marginalization, exclusion, and intolerance. One novel answer is provided by a strain of democratic theory known as agonistic pluralism, which valorizes adversarial engagement and recognizes the marginalizing tendencies implicit in drives to consensus and stability. However, the divergences between competing variants of agonistic pluralism remain largely under-developed or unrecognized. In this piece, I address this shortcoming, examining these strains of agonism around the constraints placed upon democratic discourse. I argue that the ‘associative agonism’ of theorists such as Bonnie Honig and William Connolly offers the best means for cultivating virtues necessary to revitalize a contentious democratic politics which also fosters receptivity to pluralism and difference.
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Citizenship Unhinged explores citizenship and the politics of migration through the lens of agonistic pluralism. Notions of commonality packed within citizenship risk papering over the always fragmentary, imperfect, and re-arrangeable... more
Citizenship Unhinged explores citizenship and the politics of migration through the lens of agonistic pluralism. Notions of commonality packed within citizenship risk papering over the always fragmentary, imperfect, and re-arrangeable status of membership and identity in larger collectivities. Democratic notions of popular sovereignty and inclusive pluralism call upon us to continually examine these boundaries and potential rigidities in order to ensure a vibrant and dynamic political space which promotes meaningful contestation. The central research question addressed in this study is how we can move toward a model of democratic citizenship which recognizes exclusion yet allows space for “outsiders”, such as migrants and refugees, to challenge the naturalization and permanence of their exclusion. I rely upon insights from agonistic pluralism to conceptualize such a political space as well as to draw out the ways in which this model would differ from prevailing conceptions of democratic citizenship. However, this study moves beyond a theoretical account through extensive field interviews conducted with immigration advocates and activists in the US, which allows me to examine the feasibility of fostering such spaces out of our current political realities.
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In an interdependent world of overlapping political memberships and identities, states and democratic citizens face difficult choices in responding to large-scale migration and the related question of who ought to have access to... more
In an interdependent world of overlapping political memberships and identities, states and democratic citizens face difficult choices in responding to large-scale migration and the related question of who ought to have access to citizenship. In an influential attempt to provide a normative framework for a more just global order, The Law of Peoples, political philosopher John Rawls is curiously silent regarding what his framework would mean for the politics of migration. Rawls’s “ideal theory” only briefly mentions a right of exit for the individual and a “qualified right to limit immigration” for recipient societies. Yet Rawls does not specify what qualifications his theory would entail, nor does he address what right migrants may possess to gain acceptance into another political community, mirroring the current international migration regime. In this piece, I consider the complications Rawls’s inattention to these issues creates for his broader vision of global justice. Yet I also attempt to show how these aspects of Rawls’s theory emerge from an underlying tension which confronts all liberal democratic conceptions of justice, both in theory and in practice: balancing the particularistic notion of the political community, that can endure through acts of exclusion, against the universalistic rights-claims of abstract individuals legitimating and undergirding those communities. In my conclusion, I sketch an alternative rooted in the recent insights of agonistic pluralism. I argue that this framework “breaks” the Rawlsian silence regarding migration and citizenship by productively engaging this tension to move towards more democratically defensible ends.
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This is the course website I designed for my third year Honors Tutorial, HON 341-George Orwell & Twentieth Century Political Life. It includes links to primary and secondary resources as well as a series of podcasts that I made for the... more
This is the course website I designed for my third year Honors Tutorial, HON 341-George Orwell & Twentieth Century Political Life. It includes links to primary and secondary resources as well as a series of podcasts that I made for the tutorial.