![]() As Swain gained acclaim for her scholarly work-her books have won awards and been cited by US Supreme Court justices-she drew criticism for some of her socially conservative stands. Swain told a Vanderbilt dean who had been instrumental in hiring her away from Princeton, “I’m not the same person you hired.” But Vanderbilt accepted her nonetheless-for the time being. “All of a sudden the gospel message crystallized for me,” and “my life has never been the same since then.” “I started really digging into the Bible and seeking God,” she recounted. ‘I’m not the same person’Ī “seeker after truth” known to have “spiritual experiences,” Swain decided she wanted to give money to a church “because God had been good to me.” On the recommendation of an acquaintance, she attended a black Pentecostal church in New Haven, Connecticut, and unexpectedly found herself sobbing and responding to the altar call three weeks in a row. That changed in 1999 while she pursued a second master’s degree at Yale Law School before assuming a new academic post at Vanderbilt. Swain became involved with the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a young adult but in 1975 “broke away from anything that was connected to religion and stayed in that state for 20-some years.” She was “not raised in a church,” she said, though her family identified as Methodists. Spiritually, however, Swain continued to flounder. In 1990, she became a professor of politics and public policy at Princeton University. Her third child died.Īmid those struggles, Swain worked minimum-wage jobs and pursued education-first a GED, then a bachelor’s degree from Roanoke College, a master’s from Virginia Tech, and a doctor of philosophy from the University of North Carolina. Eventually, she found herself a twice-divorced mother of two who reported abuse in both marriages. She dropped out of school in eighth grade, married at 16, and became a mother before she was 20. One year, she missed 80 days, Swain said in a profile published by the Nashville Tennessean. When it snowed, they skipped school for lack of money to buy boots. Swain, 65, grew up amid rural poverty in Virginia, with no indoor plumbing and just two beds to share with her 11 siblings. Still, she wonders whether the Southern city’s Christians see her as the change agent some have long prayed for. In an August 1 election, she hopes to become Nashville’s first African American mayor and its first conservative mayor in decades. Now in her second run for mayor in as many years, change is a hallmark of Swain’s campaign. She went from low-income single mother to Ivy League academic, from Democrat to Republican media commentator, and from Jehovah’s Witness turned non-churchgoer to committed follower of Christ. ![]() She was in.įor Swain, change has been a recurring theme in her life. Swain called her friend the next morning and told him she had changed her mind. So I jumped out of bed and started writing what became my blueprint for Nashville.” “When I awakened, my mind was flooded with policy ideas for Nashville. “I got down on my knees that night and prayed,” she said in an interview with Christianity Today. So the retired Vanderbilt University political science and law professor prayed about entering the race. Civil Rights Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities.Carol Swain said she would never run for mayor of Nashville, but then a friend called her on Easter last year and addressed each of her objections. Swain has served on the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. In addition, Cambridge University Press nominated her book, The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (2002), for a Pulitzer Prize.ĭr. 997 (1994) and by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in Georgia v. ![]() Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in Johnson v. on government, politics or international affairs in 1994, and was cited by U.S. Her first book, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Harvard University Press, 1993, 1995), won the Woodrow Wilson prize for the best book published in the U. Swain is the author or editor of eight books with a ninth forthcoming in 2018. She is an author, public speaker, and political commentator. Swain is passionate about empowering others to raise their voices in the public square. Swain was a tenured associate professor of politics and public policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Swain is an award-winning political scientist, a former professor of political science and professor of law at Vanderbilt University, and a lifetime member of the James Madison Society, an international community of scholars affiliated with the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Political scientist, James Madison Society at Princetonĭr.
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