About Speaker

Dr. Kenneth Roberts is the Susan August Rubenstein Professor of Government at Cornell University. He earned his B.A. from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University. His teaching and research interests explore the political economy of inequality and crises of democracy in Latin America and beyond. Roberts’ most recent book, Polarization and Democracy in Latin America: Legacies of the Left Turn (co-authored with Santiago Anria), was published by University of Chicago Press in 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 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? Roberts has been a Fulbright Scholar in Chile and Spain and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Centre on Social Movement Studies in Florence. He has served as Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell.