Dr Josh Vandiver is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at The University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He primarily teaches American and European constitutional law and political theory. His research centers on classical Greece and Rome, classical reception in modernity, and contemporary extremist movements. In 2024, he was guest co-editor for two special issues of the Journal for the Study of Radicalism on politics and religion.

A fifth-generation Coloradan, he was born in La Junta and raised in the town of Swink. He began his undergraduate education at The Colorado College, where he fell in love with the classics, medieval and Renaissance history, and the discipline of political theory. After transferring, he completed his AB in Government at Harvard College, then went on to New College, Oxford University, as the Lord Harlech Fellow before completing his MA and PhD in Politics at Princeton University.

Dr Vandiver is the departmental pre-law advisor and a member of the advisory boards of the Center for Legal Studies and the Heller Center for Arts and Humanities. He is also an affiliate scholar at the Center for the Study of Government and the Individual (CSGI).

2024

Constitutional Conspiracism: Aryans, Alpha Chads, and White Nationalists. In L. Ritter (Ed.), American Conspiracism: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (pp. 212–233). Routledge.

Hard Men, Hard Money, Hardening Right: Bitcoin, Peter Thiel, and Schmittian States of Exception. In A. J. McAdams & S. Piccolo (Eds.), Far-Right Newspeak and the Future of Liberal Democracy (pp. 205–230). Routledge.

2023

Guerrilla and Cognitive Warfare in Transnational Left-wing Extremism. In J. P. Zúquete (Ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Left-wing Extremism (pp. 121–140). Palgrave Macmillan.

Masculinist Identitarians, Strategic Culture, and Eurocene Geopolitics. In J. P. Zúquete & R. Marchi (Eds.), Global Identitarianism (pp. 175–196). Routledge.

2022

“Apollo Has Saved Us!” Global Ambition and Metapolitical Warfare in Alt-Right Religion. Journal for the Study of Radicalism 16 (1), pp. 135–182.

2021

Metapolitics, Masculinity, and Technology in the Rise of “Bronze Age Pervert.” In A. J. McAdams & A. Castrillon (Eds.), Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy (pp. 242–263). Routledge.

2020

Alt-Virilities: Masculinism, Rhizomatics, and the Contradictions of the American Alt-Right. Politics, Religion & Ideology, 21 (2), pp. 153–176.

2018

The Radical Roots of the Alt-Right. In Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century. Gale Cengage.

2016

Plato in Folsom Prison: Eldridge Cleaver, Black Power, Queer Classicism. Political Theory, 44 (6), pp. 764–796.

2014

Xenophon contra Plato: Citizen Motivation and Socratic Biography. Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought, 31 (1), pp. 74–102.
 

PSC 1100: The American Political System
PSC 3420: Political Theory
PSC 4470: Constitutional Law
PSC 4980: Special Problems in Political Science – Extremist Movements
PSC 9480: Political Science Internship