White Burkett Miller Professor of Governance and Foreign Affairs
Fast Facts
- Author of What Happened to the Vital Center?
- White Burkett Miller Professor of Governance and Foreign Affairs
- Award-winning educator
Areas Of Expertise
- Social Issues
- Governance
- Elections
- Founding and Shaping of the Nation
- Political Parties and Movements
- Politics
- The Presidency
Sidney M. Milkis is the White Burkett Miller Professor of Governance and Foreign Affairs and a professor of politics. His research focuses on the American presidency, political parties and elections, social movements, and American political development. In addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate students, he regularly gives public lectures on American politics and participates in programs for international scholars and high school teachers that probe the deep historical roots of contemporary developments in the United States.
Milkis earned a BA degree from Muhlenberg College and a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Featured Publications
Sidney Milkis News Feed
Sidney Milkis is part of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He and others at the Miller Center are specialists on U.S. political history. Milkis says that, when it was created in the late 1700s, the U.S. presidency was unlike any other position in world history.
Voice of America
Eight months into his presidency, most depict the Trump administration as being mired in chaos and frenzy. Such a perspective, however, overlooks the aggressive pursuit of Trump’s campaign agenda through unilateral administrative action.
In the arena of executive action, he is pursuing a model established by his recent past predecessors, with worrisome consequences to constitutional governance. That’s the conclusion of an essay in the most recent issue of the Forum, a nonpartisan journal of ideas and political analysis. Sidney M. Milkis and Nicholas Jacobs, both of the University of Virginia, argue that Trump’s deployment of what they call “executive-centered partisanship” is both in keeping with the modern presidency and a potentially damaging shift in our politics.
The Washington Post
One hundred years ago this week, a dramatic Republican National Convention prepared the ground for the transformation of American democracy.
Whoever moves into the White House in 2017 will face enormous pressure to take decisive action on how immigration admissions and rights are governed. But the experts who contributed essays to this First Year volume on immigration differ substantially in their prescriptions.
Every modern president has dwelled in the shadow of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s extraordinary beginning amid the worst economic crisis in the nation’s history.