Dr. Kenneth Roberts is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University. He earned his B.A. from Eckerd College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University. His teaching and research interests explore the political economy of inequality and crises of democratic representation in Latin America and beyond.

Dr. Roberts’ most recent book, Polarization and Democracy in Latin America: Legacies of the Left Turn (co-authored with Santiago Anria), is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press in early 2026. He is also the author of Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era and Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru. He is the co-editor, most recently, of Global Challenges to Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on Backsliding, Autocracy, and Resilience, and Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization?

Dr. Roberts has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Chile, Universidad Carlos III-Instituto Juan March in Spain, and the Centre on Social Movement Studies in Florence. At Cornell, he has been Director of Latin American Studies and Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences.