David Ross Boyd Professor of Political Science, University of Oklahoma

Allen D. Hetzke is David Ross Boyd Professor of Political Science, University of Oklahoma. Hertzke’s research is in religion and politics. He is Faculty Fellow in Religious Freedom for the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage and Presidential Teaching Fellow in the Honors College. He also served as founding director of Oklahoma University’s Religious Studies Program. He is Associate Scholar of Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project and Distinguished Senior Fellow for the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University.

He is the author of Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights; Representing God in Washington (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), Echoes of Discontent: Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson, and the Resurgence of Populism (Cq Pr, 1993), and co-author of Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture, and Strategic Choices (Westview Press, 2015), now in its fifth edition. He is editor of The Future of Religious Freedom: Global Challenges (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Religious Freedom in America: Constitutional Roots and Contemporary Challenges (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015). He co-edited a two volume project, Christianity and Freedom: Historical Perspectives and Christianity and Freedom: Contemporary Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

As Visiting Senior Fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, he directed the study, “Lobbying for the Faithful: Religious Advocacy Groups in Washington DC.” He served as lead consultant for the John Templeton Foundation to develop strategic recommendations for advancing religious freedom around the globe. Hertzke has lectured at the National Press Club, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, Harvard University, Princeton University, Georgetown University, Notre Dame University, and the University of California-Berkeley. He serves on the editorial boards of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion and The Review of Faith & International Affairs, for which he served as guest editor for a special edition (Fall, 2012) on strategies of advocacy for global religious freedom. He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Hertzke holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and did theology coursework at Washington Theological Consortium. He holds a master of science in resource economics from Cornell University and a bachelor of arts in social science from Colorado State University.