Amy Fried

Amy Fried is Professor Emerita of Political Science. Prior to retiring in Fall 2023, Fried was the John Mitchell Nickerson Professor of Political Science. She also served as Chair of the Department of Political Science and as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Fried was the Policy Advocate of the Rising Tide Center, which was funded by a five-year National Science Foundation ADVANCE-Institutional Transformation grant she co-wrote and for which she served as Co-Principal Investigator. In 2024-2025, Fried was the President of the New England Political Science Association.

Prof. Fried’s research primarily concerns the history and political uses of public opinion in the United States.

Fried’s most recent scholarly book,  More Than Blue, More Than Yankee: Complexity and Change in New England Politics, was co-edited with Erin O’Brien and published in 2024 by the University of Massachusetts Press. Fried is the co-author (with Douglas B. Harris) of At War With Government: How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump, which was published by Columbia University Press in 2021. Fried is also the author of Pathways to Polling: Crisis, Cooperation, and the Making of Public Opinion Professions (Routledge Press, 2012), Muffled Echoes: Oliver North and the Politics of Public Opinion (Columbia University Press, 1997) and many shorter works in scholarly edited volumes and journals.

During her time at the University of Maine, Fried taught a wide variety of courses on American politics, such as American Public Opinion, Women and Politics, American Political Thought, Political Behavior and Participation, and various senior seminars focusing on different aspects of American political development.

Fried is a scholar committed to public engagement. She provides analysis to a wide range of media outlets. After writing a biweekly column for the Bangor Daily News for fourteen years, Fried continues to write for the public in various venues, including at her Substack, Political Sightlines. In addition, she serves on the board of the Scholars Strategy Network, a national group that brings together scholars to address public challenges and their policy implications.

Prof. Fried won the 2019 Rising Tide Career Recognition Award and the 2016 Presidential Public Service Award from the University of Maine and in 2015 was named the Outstanding Faculty Member in Service and Outreach by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For her work on Alexis de Tocqueville and social capital, Professor Fried received the John C. Donovan award from the New England Political Science Association.