Date: 4/28/2021

Time: 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM

Mark Petracca grew up in Quincy, MA, received an A.B. in Government from Cornell University (1977), and an A.M. (1979) and PhD (1986) in Political Science from the University of Chicago. He taught at Chicago, Amherst College, Beijing University (PRC) as well as the University of California, Irvine from 1984 until his retirement in 2018. While at UCI he served as Chair of the Department of Political Science for 13 years (1996-2002; 2004-2011) and for 7 years as Associate Dean for the School of Social Sciences (2011-2018). A student of American politics, constitutional law, and democratic political theory, Petracca has written widely for scholarly and public audiences, appeared frequently on TV and radio for more than 30 years in the U.S, and abroad, testified on multiple occasions before the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, and served as an expert witness on numerous occasions in various state and federal court cases. A well regarded teacher, Petracca received numerous awards for teaching excellence while at UCI including the 2002-2003 UCI Academic Senate’s “Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Teaching” (the university’s highest teaching honor). He and his wife, Terry Schuster ’76 reside in Mashpee, MA.