Thomas Powers

Tom Powers teaches Constitutional Law and Religion and Politics at Carthage. His work related to the legal field explores the interrelationships between political theory and constitutional law in particular. He has published scholarly works on anti-discrimination politics, civil liberties and the war on terror, and the religion clauses of the First Amendment. He is finishing a book on American civil rights politics, titled “American Multiculturalism and the Anti-Discrimination Regime: The Transformation of Liberal Pluralism.”

In 2010 an article he wrote on the religion clauses of the First Amendment was published in a scholarly edited volume (Catholic University of America Press) and another article he wrote (on John Locke) was selected for publication in the refereed proceedings of the Association for Core Texts and Courses. He also attended the Jack Miller Center’s 2010 Summer Institute on the American founding and commercial republicanism.

Professor Powers came to Carthage from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where he was an assistant professor of political science from 2001 to 2008. He was previously an instructor in political science at the University of Toronto. He earned a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1984, then served four years as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army before earning a master’s degree and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto.

He joined the Carthage faculty in 2008.

• Ph.D. — Political Science, University of Toronto
• M.A. — Political Science, University of Toronto
• B.A. — Political Science, University of Chicago

• POL 2910 Constitutional Law II: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties