spring 2023 5.26

PROFESSOR OF THE YEAR
ETHAN BUSBY
Ethan Busby is Assistant Professor of American Politics, and joined BYU
Political Science over the summer of 2020. Ethan is a political psychologist
specializing in extremism, public opinion, racial and ethnic politics, and
quantitative methods. More specifically, his work explores what extremism is
and what encourages and discourages extremism. He considers both a general
approach to extremism and several specific kinds – including racial extremism,
partisan extremism, and populism. His research on extremism relies on various methods, using lab experiments,
quasi-experiments, survey experiments, text-as-data, surveys, and big data from Google and Twitter.
Ethan received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University, 2018, an M.A. in Political Science
from Northwestern University, 2015, and a B.A. in Political Science from Brigham Young University, 2013.
Ethan’s family lived in various places growing up, including New York State until he was 9. His dad was a
professor who moved from New York back to Utah. Then his father took a job in Lubbock, Texas. Each place
was 5-6 years. Ethan went to High school in Springville, Utah. His parents still live in Mapleton. He started
studying acting in college, and just sort of changed what he wanted. He studied people and why they do the
things they do. He liked politics, and liked talking about politics, and went with it.
BYU Political Science faculty members Kelly Patterson, and David Magleby helped him along the way. He
began wondering why things were going on in the world, why were people thinking a certain way, and what
they were thinking.
His wife and he have two children, and he is sleep deprived now. They met at Northwestern, she is a social
scientist. Before BYU he was at Clemson teaching Poli Sci. Current colleagues were influential: Chris
Karpowitz, Dan Nielson. Nice to have them as colleagues. He lives in Orem.
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