• Ph.D., University of Texas - Austin, 1979
• M.A., University of Texas - Austin, 1971
• B.A., Austin College, 1969

Title:

Professor of Government and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher

Interests:

Classical political theory and psychoanalytic approaches to politics are my first loves. If pressed to describe what I do in a couple of words, I would call it by the old fashioned name of moral psychology. I'm interested in the psychological roots of morality, but I'm very careful not to reduce morality to psychology, or to imagine that psychology can form the basis of morality. In one way or another, these assumptions mark my most recent books:
 

• Psychology and the Natural Law of Reparation (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
   
• Rethinking Freedom: Why Freedom Has Lost Its Meaning and What Can Be Done To Save It (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
   
• Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and the Frankfurt School (Middletown and London: Wesleyan University Press and Continuum Books, 2002)
   
• Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001) [Reprinted in paperback, 2002]
   
• Think No Evil: Korean Values in the Age of Globalization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)
   
• What Evil Means to Us (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)
   

Currently, I am fascinated by the experience of affliction. The Book of Job, The memoirs of Primo Levi, and the testimonies of Holocaust survivors are leading sources. Among the questions I ask is whether the experience of affliction even makes sense in the contemporary world. As guide to my study I follow a line from Simone Weil. "The great mystery of human life is not suffering but affliction."

Fields of Study:

Classical political theory, political psychology, psychoanalysis and politics.

Expert on Organizational Ethics:

Professor Alford has been interviewed over a hundred times by the national media on whistleblowing, and corporate ethics generally. His remarks and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, NBC, NPR, Nightly Business Report, Mother Jones, as well as dozens of other newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations.

Classes:

I regularly teach classical political theory to undergraduates, and classical, modern, and contemporary political theory to graduate students.   

Some Professional Activities:

Executive Director of the Association for Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, recent past president of the political psychology section of the American Political Science Association, Co Editor, Psychoanalysis and Society Book Series, published by Cornell University Press.

Honors:

• I have received three Fulbright Fellowships, including two Senior Fulbright Research Fellowships, the first to Germany, the second to Korea. I am a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland. I received the BSOS Teaching Excellence Award in 2003