Scott Adler
Dean of the Graduate School
Division of Academic Affairs

Scott Adler became dean of the Graduate School in June 2019. Prior to that, Adler served as chair of the Political Science department and was founding director of the department’s American Politics Research Lab. He served as director of the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences, 2016–18, and as director of graduate studies in Political Science, 2013–16. He joined the faculty as a professor of political science in 2016.

Adler’s research uses theoretical models of legislative organization to examine congressional agenda setting and committee power. He is the author of Why Congressional Reforms Fail: Reelection and the House Committee System (University of Chicago Press, 2002), which was awarded the Alan Rosenthal Prize from the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association, and Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving (Cambridge University Press, 2012, co-authored with John Wilkerson). He is co-editor of The Macropolitics of Congress (Princeton University Press, 2006). His most recent book, The U.S. Congress (W.W. Norton, 2019, co-authored with Jeffrey Jenkins and Charles Shipan) is a widely used textbook for students of Congress.

Adler earned doctoral and master’s degrees from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. Read Scott Adler’s bio on the Graduate School’s website.