Professor Ken Miller will be installed as the Don H. and Edessa Rose Professor of State and Local Government at a special ceremony at the Athenaeum on Friday, April 28.
The event will honor Miller and his many contributions to the College. Attendees will also have an opportunity to hear his analysis of California’s sweeping demographic, economic, cultural, and political changes over the past half century. The state has emerged from these changes as a paradox—flourishing on a grand scale yet beset by enormous and worsening problems. In this talk, Miller will discuss how the paradox has developed—and, also, how today the Rose Institute is seeking to promote a positive future for California.
Miller, who joined CMC in 2003, became director of the Rose Institute on July 1, 2021, having served as associate director from 2009 to June 2021.
Miller’s research focuses on state government institutions, with an emphasis on direct democracy and the interaction between law and politics. His publications include Texas vs. California: A History of Their Struggle for the Future of America (Oxford University Press, 2020), Direct Democracy and the Courts (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and co-edited volumes Parchment Barriers: Political Polarization and the Limits of Constitutional Order (University Press of Kansas, 2018) and The New Political Geography of California (Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2008).
Previously, Miller was the Ann and Herbert Vaughan Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University (2011-2012) and a visiting scholar at the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University (2017-2018).
At the Rose Institute, he has worked with students on numerous research projects, including the biennial Video Voter Guide project and the 24-state Miller-Rose Institute Initiative Database.