Professor Matthew Levendusky Named Joint Professor at the Annenberg School and the Department of Political Science

Professor Matthew Levendusky has been named a joint Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, effective January 2026. He is currently the Stephen and Mary Baran Chair in the Institutions of Democracy at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) and the director of APPC's Institutions of Democracy.

Levendusky studies public opinion and political communication, with a particular emphasis on the causes and consequences of political polarization and on how we might bridge the partisan divide in the U.S. His research focuses on understanding how institutions and elites influence the political behavior of ordinary citizens, including studies of mass polarization, the effects of partisan media, and various other topics. From 2014 until 2024, he served as a decision desk analyst for NBC News.

On the occasion of this momentous milestone in his academic career, we asked Levendusky a few questions about his time at the Annenberg School and what his research, teaching, and mentorship look like now.

What are some of the research projects you’re working on at this time?

I’m working on three projects right now: 

1. An analysis of Trump’s rhetoric, focusing on how it primes both concerns about identity and grievance, and how that has shaped contemporary public opinion. 
2. Unpacking how attitudes toward courts/the judicial system broadly have become polarized and divided. In my earlier work with colleagues from both Political Science and Annenberg, we showed that attitudes toward the Supreme Court polarized post-Dobbs, but this project unpacks why this has occurred more generally. 
3. Trying to better understand attention at this moment. Working with an interdisciplinary team, I’ve studied the persuasive effects of podcasts, but once I’m further along on the two projects above, I want to unpack how social media has reshaped our attention, and what that means for news and political communication more broadly.  

These projects cover a wide range of areas — public opinion and identity, trust in the institutions of our democracy, attention and media — but to me, this is one of the most exciting things about my job: I get to research and study so many fascinating topics. 

You’ve helped develop many of APPC’s surveys on Americans' political knowledge and attitudes toward Congress and government — what are your takeaways from these surveys? 

At the Institutions of Democracy, we have both a panel survey of the public (where we’ve interviewed the same set of respondents for several years), and we also run the annual Civics Knowledge survey (timed for Constitution Day). I’ll share one from each that speak to politics at our current moment: 

1. The public’s trust in the U.S. Supreme Court has collapsed in the last 20 years. In 2005, close to 80 percent of the public had at least a moderate amount of trust in the Court to act in the best interest of the public. In 2025, that fell to 41%, and among Democrats, it dropped to 18 percent. Such low levels of trust are a real alarm bell for the institution — something we’ve seen reflected in Chief Justice Roberts’ year-end report on the court system.  
2. The public, even Republicans, continues to support our system of checks and balances. In general, the public is not supportive of the president having carte blanche power, despite what some have claimed.  

As a scholar, one of my most important roles is to accurately document what the public believes at any point in the time, both to advance our scholarly understanding, but to also be able to provide journalists and others with the ability to hold politicians to account. 

Annenberg offers a joint doctoral degree in Communication and Political Science — how do you approach working with students whose research bridges Annenberg and the Department of Political Science? 

The fun of advising joint degree students is helping them take insights from both disciplines and use that to make their projects better. For example, Eunji Kim’s dissertation — which is now an award-winning book — showed how entertainment media (reality TV) shaped beliefs about economic inequality. Tyler Leigh’s work showed how the structure of social media reduces public support for free speech. These sorts of projects would be unlikely to emerge from students in just one program — having the ability to draw on both disciplines really yields interesting insights. 

What does it feel like to study American politics amid widespread feelings of political crisis and consternation?

When I started studying politics in the late 1990s, it was a relatively boring topic. Accurately documenting what we know about the political world is more important than ever now. But as I often tell my students, the future is not written — it is up to all of us to write it and produce the change we want to see. Adlai Stevenson, in his eulogy for Eleanor Roosevelt, said she was someone who would rather light candles than curse the darkness. Hope comes from figuring out how to light a candle, no matter how small. 

This past semester, I taught a first-year undergraduate seminar called “How to Disagree Better” that covered work on polarization and bridging divides. Each week, the students came to class and engaged deeply with the material for three hours, and had meaningful conversations with each other across lines of difference (and then taught them to their peers in an end-of-semester workshop). For all we hear about students' inability to focus, read dense work, or talk to one another, each week, my students empirically rebutted those claims. Experiences like that give me hope — that’s my small candle, hopefully lighting the way to a brighter future.