Faculty
Dr. Dickson received his B.A. at Humboldt State University, his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California, and his J.D. at UCLA. He teaches Introduction to Political Science, Constitutional Law, Judicial Behavior, and Comparative Law. Recent publications include, The Supreme Court in Conference (1940-1985) (Oxford University Press, 2001), "State Court Defiance and the Limits of Supreme Court Authority: Williams v. Georgia Revisited," 103 Yale Law Journal 1423 (1994); "The Selection and Appointment of Magistrates in England and Wales," 23 University of Toledo Law Review 697 (1992). |
caseydominguez@sandiego.edu |
Dr. Drinan was born in Illinois in 1944, and attended local public and parochial schools. He graduated from Loras College (Dubuque, Iowa) in 1966. Dr. Drinan did an M.A. degree in Foreign Affairs and a Ph.D. in Government (1972) at the University of Virginia. The first part of his professional career was in Kansas (Fort Hays State University). In 1977-78 he served as Administrative Assistant to Congressman Blouin of Iowa. Dr. Drinan joined the USD faculty in 1981 as Chair of the Political Science Department. His research specialties involve democratization and theories of international relations. He aslo works on academic integrity including recent publications in the Journal of Higher Educations, NASPA Journal, and the Journal of College Student Development. Dr. Drinan has been active in grant development and grant administration in areas such as internationalization, cultural diversity, and ethics across the curriculum. Dr. Drinan has been on the Board of Directors of the San Diego World Affairs Council of San Diego since the mid-1980's and has served as its President. Dr. Drinan serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Academic Integrity and was President in 1998. Dr. Drinan was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences between 1989 and 2006. He now teaches courses in international relations at the graduate and undergraduate level. |
Emily Edmonds-Poli received a B.A. from Middlebury College. She has an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Edmonds joined the department in 2001 and teaches courses such as: Politics in Latin America, Politics in Mexico, Comparative Politics, Politics of Developing Countries and Introduction to International Relations. Her dissertation is entitled: “Decentralization and Local Autonomy in Mexico,” and her research interests include subnational politics in Mexico as well as decentralization and democratization in Latin America. |
 Virginia Lewis, Ph.D.
Virginia Lewis received her B.A. from the American College of Switzerland, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She joined the USD faculty in 1980. She has lived and worked in London, Madrid, and Caracas, and has a lifelong interest in comparative political culture. She teaches courses in Political Theory, American Political Development, and International Human Rights. Her current work is on Gandhi and the politics of non-violence. |
 Vidya Nadkarni, Ph.D.
Vidya Nadkarni received her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She teaches International Politics, Russian Politics and Foreign Policy, American Foreign Policy, and International Relations Theory. She has published articles on Soviet/Russian foreign policy in Comparative Strategy and the Naval War College Review. |
 Noelle Norton, Ph.D.
Noelle Norton received her B.A. from UCLA and her M.A. and Ph.D. from UCSB. She is an Associate Professor with the department and the USD Honors Program Director. She joined us in 1994 to teach American politics courses, including Congress and Sex, Power, and Politics. Dr. Norton has published in Political Research Quarterly ; Policy Studies Journal ; Legislative Studies Quarterly ; Women and Politics ; Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences ; Policy Studies ; and three edited volumes , Gender, Power, Leadership and Governance (Kelly/Duerst-Lahti, 1995), Women Transforming Congress (Rosenthal, 2003) and the Historical and Multicultural Encyclopedia of Women's Reproductive Rights in the United States. She is working on a book titled , Making Masculine Mothers: The Process of Welfare Reform in the United States with Georgia Duerst-Lahti and Cathy Johnson . She continues her research on the institutional position of women legislators and women's organizations in the executive branch. |
 Lee Ann Otto, Ph.D.
Dr. Otto received her B.A. from Lawrence University, her M.A. from Northern Illinois University, and her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. She teaches courses on Politics in China, Politics in Japan, Revolutionary Change, Law of the Sea, and Theories of International Relations in both the undergraduate and graduate programs at USD. Her research has focused on East Asian maritime policies and she is a coauthor of "Law and Politics in the People's Republic of China in a Nutshell" published by West Publishing Co. in 1992. Her current research involves a comparative study of the rights of indigenous peoples in Canada, the U.S., and New Zealand to natural resources. |
 Michael R. Pfau, Ph.D.
Michael R. Pfau, Ph.D. received his undergraduate education at the University of Hamburg, Germany and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York in Sony Brook. Specializing in political psychology, Dr. Pfau researches the formation of public opinion. Most recently, he has been working on a tri-lateral research grant to study cross-border perceptions in the NAFTA countries. He is heavily involved in inter-disciplinary teaching and offers courses on Research Methods and on his native Germany in the department. His research has been published in Urban Affairs , Journal of Borderlands Studies, and elsewhere. |
David Shirk, Ph.D. 
Dr. David A. Shirk is Director of the Trans-Border Institute (http://www.sandiego.edu/tbi) and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, and was a fellow at the UCSD Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies from 1998-99 and 2001-2003. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and a variety of policy issues along the U.S.-Mexican border. As TBI Director, Dr. Shirk also directs the Justice in Mexico Project (www.justiceinmexico.org), a bi-national initiative involving scholars and experts conducting research on criminal justice and the rule of law in Mexico. He is the author of Mexico's New Politics: The PAN and Democratic Change and co-editor of Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico. |
 J. Michael Williams, J.D., Ph.D.
Mike Williams received his B.A. from the University of San Diego, his J.D. from the Washington College of Law at American University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teaches African politics, comparative politics, American politics, and urban politics. He also offers an intersession course on American politics in Washington, D.C. and is the faculty advisor for the Model United Nations program and the Pi Sigma Alpha honor society. His current research focuses on democratization at the local level in South Africa. |
Randy Willoughby received his B.A. at UCLA (summa cum laude) and his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, both in Political Science. As a graduate student, he worked on research projects in the Executive Office of the President in Washington D.C. and with the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UCSD. He has edited or co-edited books on ballistic missile defense, conventional arms control, and drug trafficking. His most recent publications have focused on French politics and security in the South Pacific and on security issues affecting the San Diego Tijuana border. Dr. Willoughby teaches courses in comparative politics and international security. |
Gary Gray received his B.A. and M.A. Degrees in Political Science from UC Santa Barbara. He then served as a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army where he completed a tour of duty as a field artillery officer in Vietnam. After military service, he returned to graduate school in Political Science at Indiana University where he completed his Ph.D. coursework, exams, and was advanced to candidacy. He began teaching at USD in 1979. He teaches courses in American Politics, State and Local Politics, and Comparative Public Policy in Advanced Industrial Societies. In addition, he coordinates the Internship Program for the department and takes students every year to the state capitol in Sacramento for a seminar on California government. Current writing interests focus on critical thinking and American values and comparative approaches to public policy in advanced welfare states. ggray@SanDiego.edu |
 Carl Luna, Ph.D.
Carl Luna is a lecturer on American government, comparative politics, and international political economy for the department. He received his Ph.D. from the American University, Washington D.C. and his B.A. in political science, history and philosophy from the University of San Diego. His research interests include social evolution and change, Russian politics and issues of contemporary and historical economic globalization. As a Senior Fulbright scholar (1999-2000) in the Russian Federation, he lectured on American politics and political economy at Nizhniy Novgorod State University. In addition to teaching and research, he is a recurrent political commentator for KPBS radio and television and the San Diego Union-Tribune. |
marymmckenzie@cox.net Spring 2008 Office Hours |
 Peter Nuñez, J.D.
Peter K. Nuñez began his career in law enforcement in 1972 as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorneys Office in San Diego, California. He held a number of positions in that office before being appointed as the U.S. Attorney by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. Mr. Nuñez served as the U.S. Attorney through August of 1988, when he left to become a litigation partner in the San Diego office of one of California's largest civil law firms. In 1990, he was appointed by President George Bush to be the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement in Washington, D.C. He was responsible for all law enforcement functions of the Treasury Department, including the Customs Service, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Criminal Investigations Division of the Internal Revenue Service, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Since 1998 he has been involved in providing training, advice, and technical assistance to various foreign governments with respect to legal reform and the improvement of their criminal justice systems. He has been a law enforcement advisor to the Governments of Armenia and El Salvador under a program sponsored by the Treasury Department. He has also worked with government officials in Georgia, Ukraine, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey and Israel in the development of legal reforms in the criminal justice and law enforcement systems. Mr. Nuñez graduated from Duke University in 1964, served in the U.S. Navy, and attended law school at the University of San Diego, graduating cum laude in 1970. Spring 2008 Office Hours |
 John G. Stoessinger, Ph.D. Distinguished Professor of Global Diplomacy Dr. John G. Stoessinger is an internationally recognized political analyst and a prize-winning author of ten leading books on world politics. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and has taught at Harvard, M.I.T., Columbia and Princeton. From 1967-1974, he served as acting director of the political affairs division at the United Nations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and lectures extensively throughout the world. On the eve of World War II, Dr. Stoessinger fled from Nazi-occupied Austria to Czechoslovakia. Three years later, he fled again via Siberia to China where he lived for seven years. In Shanghai, he served with the International Refugee Organization. He has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Laws from Grinnell College and the American College in Switzerland. |
btato@sandiego.edu Spring 2008 Office Hours |
Del Dickson, J.D., Ph.D. 
Casey Dominguez, Ph.D.
Patrick Drinan, Ph.D. 
Emily Edmonds-Poli, Ph.D.
Gary Gray, M.A. 