Robert Lieberman

Robert Lieberman serves as the John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government at the University of Oxford's Rothermere American Institute for the 2020-2021 academic year, focusing on American political development through the lens of race, democracy, and civil rights.

His research examines the contemporary crisis of American democracy and historical racial dynamics in U.S. governance. As co-convenor of the American Democracy Collaborative, he leads projects on democratic resilience—including the forthcoming book Democratic Resilience—and analyzes the mid-20th century shift from racial oppression to civil rights protection in the "Civil Rights State" project with Desmond King. His work emphasizes comparative perspectives on democratic threats rooted in societal divisions.

During the pandemic-disrupted tenure, Professor Lieberman co-taught an American politics course for MPhil students and participated in RAI events after quarantine. He advises graduate students to prioritize significant political questions over narrow methodological precision, invoking Robert Putnam's principle: "better an approximate answer to an important question than an exact answer to a trivial question."