Letter from the Chair
Welcome to Carter Hall and the Naval Academy’s Political Science Department!
To imbue our approximately 400 political science majors with knowledge of political processes, institutions, and behaviors, we have an absolutely outstanding faculty of civilian and military professors and instructors. Tenured civilian professors and Permanent Military Professors hail from top Ph.D. programs in the nation and have set an exceptionally high bar for scholarship, teaching, and service. Their research into American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and methodology, as well as their considerable service across the Academy, is the cornerstone of the department. Their service is complemented by rotational military faculty who, along with a requisite graduate degree, bring recent operational and leadership experiences to the “poli sci” passageways of Carter Hall. The department also hosts several distinguished chairs and distinguished visiting professors – endowed teaching positions that infuse the department with experienced practitioners and scholars.
Our midshipmen majors are, however, the soul of our department. Midshipmen choose to pursue a political science degree for a wide range of reasons. Some enter the Naval Academy with a keen interest in a particular aspect of the discipline. Others have their eyes set on a specific career path and believe the major best serves this interest. Many identify with the unique opportunity that the Naval Academy curriculum provides: an opportunity for an intensely technical education formed by their core courses, complemented by a demanding social science major that prepares them for their diverse roles as leaders in the Navy and Marine Corps. Regardless of what brings them to our major, the diversity of our midshipmen along with their curiosity and their energy, make this a vibrant department.
We proudly point to the accomplishments of our alumni from across generations. Leaders like General John Allen, USMC, USNA Class of 1976, who served as an award-winning military instructor in the department and later went on to be the Commander of U.S. Central Command; Senator Todd Young, USNA Class of 1995, a political science major that served in the Marine Corps and now serves as the senior Senator from Indiana and a key voice on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and even recent graduates like LTjg Sarah Skinner, USN, USNA Class of 2022, the Naval Academy’s 54 th Rhodes Scholar currently serving in the surface warfare community and deployed overseas on an Aegis destroyer.
Above all, our department strives to arm political science majors with the critical thinking skills, communication ability, and thirst for lifelong learning that will be paramount to future success as they each live out the Naval Academy mission in the years ahead. I invite you to further explore all that our department has to offer, and please feel free to contact the department’s leadership with questions.
All the best,
CAPT Dave Richardson, USN, Ph.D.
Permanent Military Professor and Department Chair
