Robert McClure

Chapple Family Professor of Citizenship and Democracy
Maxwell Professor of Teaching Excellence

Degree

Ph.D., Indiana University, 1969

Specialties

American politics, leadership, mass communication

Biography

Robert D. McClure is Chapple Family professor of Citizenship and Democracy as well as Political Science and Public Affairs. His interests include political leadership and the presidency, democratic institutions, and mass communication. McClure''s publications (authored and co-authored) include Political Ambition: Who Decides to Run for Congress; Misguided Democracy: The Policy of Free-Lance Politics; and The Unseeing Eye: The Myth of Television Power in National Elections, which was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the field''s most influential books written in the past 50 years. Currently, McClure supervises Maxwell Schools'' introductory, team-taught, interdisciplinary courses on citizenship and global community.  He is the team leader for the instructional staff in the course Critical Issues in the United States.  He also co-teaches regularly a course with the Knight Chair of Political Reporting, The Press and American Democracy.  Previously, McClure served as legislative assistant to Congressman Lee Hamilton and as a journalist for the Scripps-Howard Newspapers and the St. Petersburg Times. From 1986-1989, McClure was director of the University Honors Program and from 1990-2003, Associate Dean and Senior Associate Dean of the Maxwell School.