Rob Goodman

Rob Goodman is Assistant 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 most 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, under contract). His current research project, Black Cicero: Race and American Oratory, 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 Journal of Politics (2022), the European Journal of Political Theory (2021), the Review of Politics (2020), the American Political Science Review (2018), Redescriptions (2017), History of Political Thought (2016), 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 2016 Midwest Political Science Association Conference.

Rob is the co-author of two books: 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, Politico, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Aeon, and Nautilus.