Jeff Kopstein
  • July 2, 2026

  • Three-year term and funding recognize scholars of exceptional value to the university

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Jeffrey Kopstein, UC Irvine Chancellor’s Professor of political science, has been awarded the title of Chancellor’s Fellow. The honor recognizes scholars of exceptional value to the university, and whose recent achievements in scholarship evidence extraordinary promise for world-class contributions to knowledge. The three-year appointment includes $25,000 per year in support of his research on comparative politics, dictatorship and democracy, ethnic politics, and political violence.

Kopstein has been a member of the UC Irvine faculty since 2015, following professorial posts at the University of Toronto and University of Colorado at Boulder. His research, funded by the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, European Commission, and others has focused on interethnic violence, voting patterns of minority groups, and anti-liberal tendencies in civil society, with special attention on cases within European and Russian Jewish history. He’s the author, coauthor or editor of seven books, including his latest - The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers our Future (Polity Press), coauthored with Stephen Hanson, William & Mary – which was named among Foreign Affairs’ top 36 books in 2025, and one of the top three in the political and legal category. He’s authored more than 60 published academic journal articles and chapters, and his work has been featured widely in popular press, including pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He holds a bachelor’s in political economy and master’s and Ph.D. in political science, all from UC Berkeley.

His three-year tenure as a Chancellor’s Fellow follows the concluding terms of fellow social scientists Sara Goodman, political science professor, and Michael Lee, cognitive sciences professor, who were awarded the fellowship in 2023.

 

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