Faculty Expert Profile

Steven Teles is a political scientist focused on the intersection of political economy, public policy, political parties and ideology. His recent writings focus on minoritarianism and its impact on democracy, the abundance movement, political economy, and the need for greater ideological diversity in higher education.

Teles is the author of Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites (Oxford University Press, 2020); The Captured Economy: How The Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth and Increase Inequality (with Brink Lindsey, Oxford University Press, 2017); Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration (with David Dagan, Oxford University Press, 2016); The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton University Press, 2008), and Whose Welfare: AFDC and Elite Politics (University Press of Kansas, 1996). He is also editor of Conservatism and American Political Development (with Brian Glenn, Oxford University Press, 2009) and Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and UK (with Glenn Loury and Tariq Modood, Cambridge University Press, 2005). He has published widely in more popular outlets, from Democracy Journal, The Nation, The Atlantic, and The American Prospect, to National Affairs, The Public Interest, and National Review.

Teles earned his Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia in 1995 and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University's Center for American Political Studies and Princeton University. He earned his B.A. in political science from George Washington University in 1989.