Chris Alexander
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Associate Professor of Political Science
Location, Location, Location
Comfortably settled in the newly reconstructed Duke Residence Hall, Chris Alexander knows there’s no better spot for the headquarters of Davidson’s Dean Rusk International Studies Program: right next to the Alvarez College Union and a stone’s throw from the E.H. Little Library and Chambers Building. “It’s the crossroads of the campus.”
Wishes Granted
“Our travel grants are a great example of Davidson faculty and staff saying to students, ‘Think big, and let us help you make it happen.’” Alexander’s office whiteboard is also a result of close campus collaboration: “Every one of those names is there because a student or a faculty member wanted it there,” he says of a list of guest speakers that ranges from global policymakers and academics to leading journalists and writers.
People and Places
Son of a first-generation-to-go-to-college, Sputnik-era engineer in the Tennessee hills, Alexander remembers his mother finding the money to buy Childcraft encyclopedias. “I especially loved the ‘People and Places’ one.’” While earning a Ph.D. in political science, Alexander cut his doctoral teeth on the galvanizing Middle East politics of the 1980s, the Shah’s fall, Sadat’s assassination. “It was not so much the intellectual questions that compelled me, it was the drama of it. This is stuff that people fight and die for. This is Shakespeare.”
Will Work for Adventure
His job today helps scratch the itch for adventure. Not only does he enjoy lively correspondence with guest speakers like fellow Tennessean and Newsweek editor Jon Meacham—but the Dean Rusk Program itself covers the globe as well as the campus: study abroad, international students, international speakers, festivals, and other special events. “I like what happens in the classroom, I like being in the classroom, but I love being intellectually promiscuous.”