Brendan Nyhan, a well-known political scientist who taught for seven years at Dartmouth before accepting a position at the University of Michigan last year, will be returning to the College full-time in the fall, he confirmed to The Dartmouth in an email statement.
Nyhan had left the College last summer to become a professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at Michigan. He wrote that he was thankful for the opportunity to teach at Michigan and has “nothing but positive things to say” about the school, but that he wanted to come back to Dartmouth.
“I’m incredibly lucky to have the choice and ultimately my wife Mary and I decided that Dartmouth and Hanover are the best fit for our family both professionally and personally,” Nyhan wrote. “We missed our wonderful faculty and staff colleagues and the amazing Dartmouth students and our whole family missed the community we had formed in Hanover.”
Nyhan, whose research focuses on political misinformation, became an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth in 2011 and then was promoted to full professor in 2016. He taught a number of popular classes at Dartmouth, including GOVT 30.04, “Political Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories” and GOVT 83.21, “Experiment in Politics.” He has been a regular contributor to the New York Times’ The Upshot blog and is frequently quoted in national political news stories.
Nyhan wrote that he will be teaching in the coming winter and spring terms and then will be returning to a full teaching schedule in the 2020-21 academic year. He is currently scheduled to teach GOVT 30.04 in the Winter 2020 term and GOVT 83.21 the following term.
In an email statement, government department chair James Muirhead called Nyhan’s return to Dartmouth “fabulous news.”
“That Professor Nyhan is returning is a brilliant reflection on Dartmouth’s strengths — as well as [dean of faculty Elizabeth] Smith’s leadership,” Muirhead wrote. “She, along with enthusiastic support from President Hanlon and Provost Helble, made this happen.”
Nyhan wrote that his appointment officially begins on July 1.
