Rob Goodman

Rob Goodman is Associate Professor of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University in 2018 and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University. His recent book, Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions (Cambridge University Press, 2022), investigates the development of models of skilled speech in classical antiquity, as well as their translation into modern institutional settings. It proposes that these models remain a valuable resource for critiquing the current state of political speech. Rob is also the co-editor of Populism, Demagoguery, and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2024). His current research project, Black Cicero: Race and American Rhetoric, is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.

At Columbia, Rob worked as a Core Curriculum instructor and was a Heyman Center for the Humanities Fellow. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Rob worked as speechwriter for U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senator Chris Dodd. He also studied at George Washington University (M.A., Public Policy) and Duke University (B.A., English).

Rob's academic work has been published in the American Political Science Review (2023 and 2018), History of Political Thought (2023 and 2016), Polity (2023), Populism (2023), the Journal of Politics (2022), the European Journal of Political Theory (2021), the Review of Politics (2020), Redescriptions (2017), the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (2014), and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (2010). His paper "Edmund Burke and the Deliberative Sublime" was the co-winner of the Review of Politics Award for best paper in normative political theory at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference.

Rob is also the author of Not Here (Simon & Schuster Canada, 2023), a book on democratic erosion in Canada and the United States, and the co-author of two additional books for general audiences: A Mind at Play, a biography of Claude Shannon (Simon & Schuster, 2017), and Rome's Last Citizen, a book on Cato the Younger and the Roman Republic (Thomas Dunne, 2012). He has also written for Slate, The Atlantic, The Globe and Mail, Politico, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Aeon, and Nautilus.