​I'm the Director of the Honors College and associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark, where I began working in 2016. I was thrilled to be invited to take on the challenge of revitalizing an Honors College and to return to a city I've always loved.

 

From 2008-16 I taught at Baruch College, one of the senior colleges of the City University of New York (CUNY). I was also on the faculty of the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York. I've taught classes in early American history, economic history, and seminars on Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and the history of New York City. I won a Whiting Foundation teaching award and fellowship leave for my teaching.

 

My academic research in political economy, banks, transportation enterprises, and political entrepreneurship grew out of and still complements my occasional work as a journalist. I was on the staffs of both Money magazine and George magazine, and was the managing editor of PoliticsNJ.com. I've written for BusinessWeek, the New York Times, Talking Points Memo, msnbc.com, Commonweal, and many other publications.

 

I was born in Paterson and am the first in my family to go to college. I went to Clifton High School, started college as a pre-med but gravitated toward my interest in history at Haverford College, and later earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Virginia. I've had held fellowships with the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, the Gilder-Lehrman Foundation, and the McNeil Center for Early American History at the University of Pennsylvania. I still am involved with the Jefferson Scholars Foundation as a member of their graduate fellows selection committee and I'm a member of the Board of Editors of the Papers of Gouverneur Morris. For five years I was co-director of the Columbia University Early American History and Culture seminar.

 

I'm a former MSNBC Contributor and currently a Contributing Editor at Talking Points Memo. I'm a former member of the PSC-CUNY union and belong to the AAUP-AFT chapter at Rutgers.

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