
Faculty
Program Director
Robert Elias has taught in USF’s politics department since 1989. Hailing from a Czech and Irish-Catholic working class family in New York City, Professor Elias created the USF Legal Studies, Criminal Justice Studies, and Peace & Justice Studies programs. He’s taught in USF's Honors Humanities and in the BA/MA in International Studies programs.
Elias has taught previously at McGill University (Montreal), Tufts University (Boston and France), the UC Berkeley, Penn State University, and the...
- Penn State University, PhD, 1981
- University of Strasbourg, Certificate, 1982
- Penn State University, M.A., 1974
- University of Pennsylvania, B.A., 1972
Full-Time Faculty
Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, the Mae and Benjamin Swig Professor in Jewish Studies and the founding Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, has been at USF since 2007. An educator for more than two decades, his primary academic interest is the intersection between identity formation, social justice, and marginalized groups.
Aaron completed his PhD in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied the History of Religions...
- PhD, Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
- MTS, Harvard Divinity School
- BA, Johns Hopkins University
Kouslaa Kessler-Mata arrived at USF in 2007 as an ethnic minority dissertation fellow after completing a fellowship at the National Congress of American Indians in 2006–07. She received her PhD in Political Science at the University of Chicago and serves in the Politics Department at USF as an associate professor. Her research interests include: democratic politics; the normative dimensions of policy making; negotiating political boundaries between local and tribal governments; federalism; and...
- University of Chicago, AM, PhD in Political Science
- San Francisco State University, BA in American Studies, Minor in American Indian Studies
- Federalism
- American Indian Politics
- Political Theory (Self-Determination)
Kathryn Nasstrom teaches in the U.S. field and specializes in civil rights history, women’s history, oral history, and memory & narrative studies. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993 and has been at USF since 1994.
She is the author of Everybody's Grandmother and Nobody's Fool: Frances Freeborn Pauley and the Struggle for Social Justice (Cornell University Press, 2000), and she has published in the Journal of American History and the Oral History...
Kimberly Richman received a BA at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and an MA and a PhD in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at UC Irvine, where she also completed a graduate emphasis in women's studies. She currently teaches Criminology; Sociology of Law; Deviance and Social Control; Senior Thesis Workshop; and Capstone in Sociology.
Professor Richman's primary areas of research interest are law and society, criminology, and the effects of legal rights (or their lack) on...
- PhD, University of California, Irvine
- MA, University of California, Irvine
- BA, Pitzer College
- Criminology
- Legal Studies
- Gender and Sexuality
- Social Justice and Inequalities
Sadia Saeed is a historical sociologist with substantive interests in religion and politics, international human rights, and global inequalities. Her first book Politics of Desecularization: Law and the Minority Question in Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 2017) examines the contentious relationship between Islam, nationalism, and rights of religious minorities in colonial India and Pakistan. It received the 2016-2017 Book Prize from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS). Her...
- PhD, Sociology, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
- MA, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
- BSc (Honors), Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
Cecília Santos received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master in Law from the University of São Paulo. She joined the University of San Francisco in 2001, and since 2006 she is also a research member of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She teaches courses on gender and development, globalization, sociology of law, and Brazilian culture and society.
Her research focuses on legal mobilization within and across...
- PhD, Sociology, University of California, Berkeley,
- MA, Law, University of São Paulo
Professor James Lance Taylor is from Glen Cove, Long Island. He is author of the book Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, which earned 2012 "Outstanding Academic Title" - Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. (Ranked top 2 percent of 25,000 books submitted and top 8 percent of 7,300 actually accepted for review by the American Library Association). Rated “Best of the Best.” The hardback version sold out in the U.S. and the paperback version was...
- PhD, University of Southern California (USC)
- MA, University of Southern California (USC)
- BA, Pepperdine University
Brian Weiner received his BA from Princeton University, and his MA and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He specializes in political theory (from the ancients to contemporary theory), American political theory, and public law. He teaches courses in the areas of political theory, law, and American politics. Professor Weiner also teaches Literature and Political Thought and Democratic Theory and Democratic Transitions. He is a member of the Honors Program in the Humanities, where...
- BA, Princeton University
- MA, University of California at Berkeley
- PhD, University of California at Berkeley
- Political theory (from the ancients to contemporary theory)
- American political theory
- Public law
Dana Zartner, JD, PhD is a Full Professor in the International Studies Department and is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law at the University of San Francisco, where she specializes in international and comparative law, with a focus on the intersection of environmental justice and human rights. Professor Zartner’s first book Courts, Codes, and Custom: Legal Tradition and State Policy Toward International Human Rights and Environmental Law was released by Oxford University Press (2014)...
- PhD, Political Science, University of California, Davis
- JD, Concentration in International Law, Boston University
- BA, International Relations, Hamline University