About

The provided page text does not contain a professional biography or specific information about Professor Tasha Philpot's research focus, background, or key contributions. Therefore, the biography cannot be extracted from the given content.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Computer Security
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Public administration
• Internet privacy
• Marketing
• Data science
• Management
• Social psychology
• Business
• Public relations
• Theology
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Mae Coates King: Her Story

  National Review of Black Politics · 2023-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Mae Coates King

  National Review of Black Politics · 2023-01-01

  article

  Dr. Mae Coates King was born in Lee County, Arkansas, to a farmer and preacher father and a housewife mother. It was her grandfather, Robert, who piqued her interest in Africa that would shape her career. In March 1960, Mae C. King went to jail. As a twenty-one-year-old student at Bishop College, an HBCU, and Chairman of the local chapter of the National Student Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), she was at the forefront of student challenges to racial discrimination in local community of Marshall, Texas. There, she helped to lead sit-ins and other forms of direct action after being trained in nonviolent tactics by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This commitment to justice and equality was met with violent repression from law enforcement and she, along with hundreds of other student protestors, were arrested, jailed, and put on trial. Undeterred, King continued to struggle against structural racism and to speak out about her experience of confinement. These acts of courage and commitment garnered the respect and praise of her peers.While at Bishop College, she developed an interest in international relations through the mentorship of Dr. Jenkins, the Dean of Women at the College, and through her work with students from several countries in the YWCA. King went on to earn her BA (1960) in social study with a minor in history. She went directly to graduate school on a National Defense Education Fellowship, choosing Political Science as her area of study at the University Idaho. After writing a thesis on contemporary nationalism in Ghana, she earned her MA in 1962. She went on to obtain a PhD in 1968, concentrating her dissertation research on the United Nations and the Congo crisis. In between these degrees, she took time off in 1963 to teach Political Science at Texas Southern University; there she met a few Black political scientists, including Mack Jones.From 1975–1989, she taught and conducted research at the University of Benin in Nigeria. She was hired at American Political Science Association (APSA), as the first Black and first woman to work on its professional staff, leading what came to be known as the Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession and the Committee on the Status of Women. Though the situation was often tense, she was able to persist because she had Jewel Limar Prestage—the first Black person to earn a PhD in political science—as a model and mentor. When NCOBPS was founded, King was a key figure in APSA. In 1970, these two trailblazing women worked together to organize the pivotal, now infamous, conference in Baton Rouge, LA, that birthed NCOBPS. King ultimately understood NCOBPS as an organization committed to the work that APSA had long neglected, namely the engagement of Black political scientists. After the founding of NCOBPS, she served as membership secretary and secretary-treasurer of the Graduate Assistantship Program, where she was in direct contact with Black political scientists and helped to cultivate a strong and enduring network among them.Her dedication to Black freedom and the flourishing of African people did not abate with the end of de jure segregation; indeed, it is her persistent scholar-activism on behalf of the continent and its descendants in the Diaspora that makes her one of the most important Black political scientists of our time. Along with co-founding NCOBPS, Dr. King has been instrumental in building, leading, and representing other organizations germane to African descendants, including the National Council of Negro Women and the African Studies Association. When the latter continued to undermine the work of Black scholars on Africa, Dr. King helped to form the African Heritage Studies Association, of which she is a lifetime member and a former Director.In recognition of her significant work, the Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics created the “Mae C. King Distinguished Paper Award on Women, Gender, and Politics” in her honor. Given her seminal text on Nigerian politics, Basic Currents of Nigerian Foreign Policy (1996), critical work on U.S. foreign policy toward Africa, entitled “Race and U.S. Foreign Policy: Reflections on West Africa” and groundbreaking interventions on Black women in politics, including, “The Politics of Sexual Stereotypes” (1973) and “Oppression and Power: The Unique Status of the Black Woman in the American Political System” (1975), it is fitting that an award in her name is bestowed each year upon the best paper presented in political science on women, gender, and Black Politics at a national or regional political science conference.Following in the footsteps of her mentor, Jewel Prestage, King has paved the way for a generation of Black political scientists generally, and Black female political scientists particularly, to engage in activist-scholarship across the discipline, including in international relations, comparative politics, and Black politics. She has made a significant contribution to the modern Black Liberation Movement, and to other fields of study, including African studies, Black studies, and Black women’s studies. In this way, she serves as a model for leaving our disciplines, institutions, and communities in a better condition than we found it.

  PublisherDOI

• Protecting the integrity of survey research

  PNAS Nexus · 2023 · 25 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Computer Security

  Although polling is not irredeemably broken, changes in technology and society create challenges that, if not addressed well, can threaten the quality of election polls and other important surveys on topics such as the economy. This essay describes some of these challenges and recommends remediations to protect the integrity of all kinds of survey research, including election polls. These 12 recommendations specify ways that survey researchers, and those who use polls and other public-oriented surveys, can increase the accuracy and trustworthiness of their data and analyses. Many of these recommendations align practice with the scientific norms of transparency, clarity, and self-correction. The transparency recommendations focus on improving disclosure of factors that affect the nature and quality of survey data. The clarity recommendations call for more precise use of terms such as "representative sample" and clear description of survey attributes that can affect accuracy. The recommendation about correcting the record urges the creation of a publicly available, professionally curated archive of identified technical problems and their remedies. The paper also calls for development of better benchmarks and for additional research on the effects of panel conditioning. Finally, the authors suggest ways to help people who want to use or learn from survey research understand the strengths and limitations of surveys and distinguish legitimate and problematic uses of these methods.

  PublisherDOI

• Normalizing Diversity in Merit Review Forms

  PS Political Science & Politics · 2022-10-05 · 1 citations

  article

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Normalizing Diversity in Merit Review Forms

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-05-31

  datasetOpen access

  Replication material for Normalizing Diversity in Merit Review Forms. This paper is part of the PS Symposium on Diversity and Inclusion in Political Science.

  PublisherDOI

• Black Religious Belief Systems and Political Participation

  National Review of Black Politics · 2020 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Political science research has shown that attending religious institutions promotes Blacks’ political participation by developing civic norms, skills, and networks. Fewer studies, however, examine what role religious beliefs play in promoting the political participation of African Americans. Inasmuch as religious beliefs are at the heart of what binds people to their religious institutions, it is also important to examine how variations in the way people conceptualize their religious duties affect their willingness to engage the political system. Thus, this article adds to the existing research by examining two religious belief systems prominent in Afro-Christianity: the Prosperity Gospel, which emphasizes individualism and divine favor; and the Social Gospel, which emphasizes working to achieve a just society. Using original survey data, the analyses find that the Social Gospel is associated with higher levels of political engagement and participation among Blacks, while the Prosperity Gospel is associated with lower levels.

  PublisherDOI

• Chronicling Our Legacy of Leadership

  National Review of Black Politics · 2020 · 2 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  This paper is a culmination of research by the task force established to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS). It presents a capsule history of the founding of NCOBPS and then profiles of the founders of the organization. The profiles focus on the founders’ educational backgrounds, careers, and contributions to NCOBPS leadership, to the profession in terms of scholarship and service, and to the Black community and the nation with respect to their work in civil rights and community organizations, the bureaucracy, and as elected and appointed officials. The purpose is to provide not only a distilled and concise record, but also a framework from which to develop future research.

  PublisherDOI

• A New Face to the Race Card? Campaigns, Racial Cues, and Candidate Credibility

  Social Science Quarterly · 2019-09-02 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Objective This research examines the effects of using positive racial imagery in the context of an electoral campaign. Method This study utilizes an experiment that was embedded in a survey conducted as part of the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Results Unlike negative stereotypical images that activate racial prejudice, positive racial images can be used to improve perceptions of a candidate's perceived level of inclusivity and overall candidate evaluations. The ability to do so, however, is contingent on the racial attitudes of the subjects. Conclusion This study provides new insight into how racial appeals can be made in campaigns as well as the relative rigidity and fluidity of political stereotypes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Race, Gender, and the 2016 Presidential Election

  PS Political Science & Politics · 2018-07-03 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT With the first female presidential candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket, the gender gap in 2016 was predicted to be the largest ever. Although the gender gap proved to be bigger than any other in recent history, with a majority of women voting for Hillary Clinton, a disaggregation of the vote by race indicated that not all women equally supported the female presidential candidate. This suggests the existence of a racialized gender gap not previously explored by extant research. Thus, this article explores the nature of this interracial gender gap by examining the political evaluations of men and women, by race, in the 2016 presidential election. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) Time Series Study merged with the ANES Cumulative Data File (1948–2012), predictors of the gender gap were explored and the circumstances under which an interracial gender gap can be narrowed were examined.

  PublisherDOI

• Conservative but Not Republican : The Paradox of Party Identification and Ideology among African Americans

  2017-03-02 · 12 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Conservative but Not Republican provides a clear and comprehensive framework for understanding the formation and structure of ideological self-identification and its relationship to party identification in the United States. Exploring why the increase in Black conservatives has not met with a corresponding rise in the number of Black Republicans, the book bridges the literature from a number of different research areas to paint a detailed portrait of African-American ideological self-identification. It also provides insight into a contemporary electoral puzzle facing party strategists, while addressing gaps in the current literature on public opinion and voting behavior. Further, it offers original research from previously untapped data. The book is primarily designed for political science, but is also relevant to African-American studies, communication studies, and psychology. Including easy-to-read tables and figures, it is accessible not only to academic audiences but also to journalists and practitioners.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Black Oversample for the American National Election Study

  NSF · $491k · 2008–2011

Frequent coauthors

• Ismail K. White

  Princeton University

  7 shared

• Arthur Lupia

  State Street (United States)

  4 shared

• Ernest B. McGowen

  University of Richmond

  4 shared

• Hanes Walton

  4 shared

• David L. Leal

  The University of Texas at Austin

  3 shared

• Eric L. McDaniel

  3 shared

• Kristin N. Wylie

  James Madison University

  2 shared

• Vincent L. Hutchings

  2 shared