Keith Shimko

Promoted to Professor
Department of Political Science
kshimko@purdue.edu

Keith Shimko received his Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University and a bachelor’s degree in government from Franklin and Marshall College. His research concerns international relations – particularly United States foreign/defense policy – international security, war and international conflict, and international relations theory.

Since joining the Purdue faculty in 1989, Shimko has won many of the university’s most prominent awards, including the 2016 Charles B. Murphy Award, the university’s highest undergraduate teaching honor. Shimko also received the College of Liberal Arts’ 2014 Kenneth F. Kofmehl Undergraduate Teaching Award, was inducted into the Purdue Book of Great Teachers in 2013, and won the College of Liberal Arts Educational Excellence Award in 2012. He was a College of Liberal Arts Center for Humanistic Studies fellow in 2016.

In addition to his numerous published chapters, articles, and reviews, Shimko has written a number of books: The Foreign Policy Puzzle: Interests, Threats and Tools (Oxford, 2015); The Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution (Cambridge, 2010), which was a Choice editor’s pick of the month; International Relations: Perspectives and Controversies (Houghton-Mifflin, 2005); and Images and Arms Control: Perceptions of the Soviet Union in the Reagan Administration (University of Michigan, 1991), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 1993 and won the 1992 Quincy Wright Award from the Midwest International Studies Association for best book in international studies.

Between October 2003 and July 2004, Shimko served as a guest professor at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Studies and in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hamburg. At Purdue, he has taught a range of courses on international relations and foreign policy, warfare, and weapons.

And Shimko has been an active faculty member on the Purdue campus. In addition to serving as the Department of Political Science’s director of graduate studies (2000-02 and 2006-09) and director of undergraduate studies (1994-98), Shimko has also served several terms as a College of Liberal Arts representative in the University Senate and assisted on a long list of faculty committees.