Amy Fried
Profe
ssor Emerita of Political Science
PhD, University of Minnesota
BA, San Francisco State University
115 Boudreau Hall
amyfried@maine.edu
207.581.1797
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 formerly 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. Fried is the 2024-2025 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, At War With Government: How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump, is co-authored with Douglas B. Harris and 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.
With Prof. Erin O’Brien is co-editor of a forthcoming edited volume, More Than Blue, More Than Yankee: Complexity and Change in New England Politics, which will be published in 2024 by the University of Massachusetts Press.
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 provides analysis to a wide range of media outlets and writes a biweekly column for the Bangor Daily News. In addition, she serves on the Steering Committee 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.