Faculty/Staff Detail
Robert Spitzer
Website: Robert Spitzer website
Dr. Spitzer is the author of fifteen books, including four on the presidency, and five on gun control, and over 600 scholarly articles, book chapters, reviews, papers, and essays, and is Series Editor for the Book Series on American Constitutionalism published by SUNY Press, and for the book series on presidential briefing books for transaction publishers. He has testified before Congress, participated in meetings at the White House, and has had his work cited by federal courts. In the 1980s, he served as a member of the New York State Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. Spitzer was elevated to the rank of Distinguished Service Professor in 1997, received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2003, Cortland's Outstanding Achievement in Research Award in 2005 and 2010, and is a former President of the Presidency Research Group of the American Political Science Association.
Education
M.A. and Ph.D., Cornell University
B.A., State University of New York at Fredonia (summa cum laude)
Teaching
Courses taught: Introduction to American Government and Politics; the Legislative Process; Gun Control: Crime, Law and Policy; Media and Politics and the American Presidency.
Publications
Books: Guns Across America: Reconciling Gun Rules And Rights (2015); Encyclopedia of Gun Policy and Gun Rights (co-author, 2012); We the People (co-author; 10th ed., 2015); The Politics of Gun Control (6th ed., 2015); Gun Control: A Documentary and Reference Guide (2009); Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Training and Law Reviews Distort Constitutional Meaning (2008); The Presidency and the Constitution (Co-Author, 2005); Essentials of American Politics (2002); The Right to Bear Arms (2001); Politics and Constitutionalism (2000); President and Congress (1993); Media and Public Policy (1993); The Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution (1990); The Presidential Veto (1988); The Right to Life Movement and Third Party Politics (1987); The Presidency and Public Policy (1983)
Service
Media appearances include: NBC’s “Today Show,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Network Nightly News, PBS’s “News Hour With Jim Lehrer,” CNN, CNBC, MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” the PBS documentary film “Guns and Mothers,” NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross,” media outlets in Canada, Britain, Australia, Japan, Germany, Norway, Spain; interviewed by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, among others. Regular contributor to the Huffington Post and panelist on the weekly public affairs program, “The Ivory Tower Half Hour,” broadcast on WCNY-TV, Syracuse, NY.
You can find a link to Dr. Spitzer's Interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and a second link to his interview on NPR's Fresh Air program below.