Neil Gross

Education

• Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002
• B.A., University of California-Berkeley, 1992

Areas of Expertise

• Politics of higher education
• Intellectuals
• Police

Personal Information

Neil Gross joined the Colby faculty in 2015. He taught previously at Princeton, the University of British Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Southern California.

Gross works primarily on the politics of higher education and intellectual life. His books include Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? (Harvard University Press, 2013) and Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher (University of Chicago Press, 2008). He also studies police reform (Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture, Metropolitan/Holt, 2023).

Gross’s articles have been published in the American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Sociological Theory, Theory and Society, and other leading academic journals. He writes frequently for the New York Times and has contributed to The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and other magazines and newspapers.

He is working now on two projects: a book about how politics is reshaping the undergraduate experience (for Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster) and a study (with Elisabeth Anderson, Daniel Karell, and Solon Simmons) of how faculty and research institutions are navigating the current political era.