Nick Cimillo ’26
Features Editor
This year, the Trinity community is joined by seven new tenure-track faculty members. Among them is Shane A. Gleason, Ph.D., the new associate professor of Public Policy and Law. In conversation with the Tripod, Professor Gleason discussed his academic and professional background, his published and ongoing research and his initial thoughts on teaching at Trinity.
Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, Professor Gleason knew from a young age that he was interested in the legal field. “We all had that thing that we wanted to do when we were kids,” Professor Gleason remarked. “I wanted to be a lawyer … when I was 10 or 11 or so, [in] the mornings before school, it was my job to get my younger sister ready for school. And that meant I was up before her, and I would start reading the newspaper.” The pieces he read pertained to new developments in law at the time, including the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton and O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. “I thought law was fascinating, that government and politics were fascinating… I [even] did an internship when I was in high school with my city’s law department.”
Professor Gleason attended Cleveland State University for his undergraduate studies as a first generation student, and around his sophomore year there he noticed something change. “I [was] working on a research paper… about the Clinton healthcare reform proposals in 1994 … and I realized I was having fun with it. I was really, really enjoying writing that research paper.” And after meeting with his professor, he came to realize that “teaching could be fun. To me, … the beauty of Public Policy and Law is that it’s applied; we can point to … how our material is playing out in the real world… [and] touching the public.” He graduated in 2007 with a double major in Political Science and History.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Professor Gleason worked for Working America for two years, a community outreach branch of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and also got involved with grassroots political movements and canvassing. “I knocked on 100,000 doors in the 2008 election,” he remarked. “I had a little callus on my finger… that callus was there for at least 10 years.” He then attended graduate school at Southern Illinois University, once again studying Political Science but with added concentrations of public law, judicial politics and research methods. After acquiring his Ph.D. in 2014, Professor Gleason’s first faculty job was at Idaho State University, where he stayed for four years before teaching at Texas A&M University for another six.
Through all of these developments, Professor Gleason has also honed his research on identity politics in the U.S. Supreme Court. “I primarily look at identity politics through the lens of gender,” he said. “A lot of research in judicial politics treats gender as a binary — is there a male or female attorney standing before the Supreme Court? I approach the question of gender … as a performance. Does an attorney who comes before the court… act in a way that the justices expect men or women to act?” His primary example is a male attorney giving a closing argument at a trial: “[He’s] forceful, very aggressive… [and the judges think] ‘Wow, he’s a pretty good attorney!’ Now a woman says the same thing, and it’s like ‘Oh wow, isn’t she aggressive? We don’t like her very much.’ It’s the performance of gender, and I’ve primarily [looked at] that via language… women are expected to be emotional, [and] men are expected to not be.”
Professor Gleason has also noted in his research that all attorneys brought before the Supreme Court are told to deliver their arguments forcefully, a fact that puts women attorneys in a precarious situation. “For a female attorney, they can either be a ‘good attorney’ or a ‘good woman.’ They’re caught in this double bind. No matter which way they go, they gotta violate some norms.” His findings revealed that women were more successful when appealing to gender norms, not professional ones, and that women, or any minority group in the courtroom, are less successful when they more deliberately lean into professional standards.
Professor Gleason has incorporated elements of his research into a class he teaches at Trinity: PBPL 220, Research and Evaluation. “When you’re talking about methodologies, I like to use examples, [and] I do use examples from my own research a fair bit,” he said. “When we come to the spring, I’ll be teaching more substantive courses. I have a class on gender and the law, and a senior seminar… we’re going to be looking at attorneys [in that one], which is where my research primarily situates.” In addition to a section of PBPL 220, Professor Gleason is also teaching a section of the Public Policy and Law internship seminar, PBPL 398.
Following the first few class meetings of the semester, Professor Gleason expressed his first impressions on teaching at Trinity. “The other day in 220, we were talking about… [the] philosophy of science… different epistemological approaches to research … And we had what I thought was a wonderful class discussion. The class was small enough for all of us [to sit] around a big conference table, [and] I felt like everyone made really, really good points.” He went on to emphasize the value of a smaller class size, and how it was a jarring but very welcome adjustment from teaching classes “as big as 230 people… To me, I really do value [being able to work] one-on-one with students, and when you have 230, you’re not [even] going to learn everyone’s name.”
He continued on to say that at Trinity, “We can put a really strong emphasis on teaching. We can also put a really strong emphasis on research. To me, that’s having my cake and eating it, too.” Professor Gleason has also come to appreciate aspects of Trinity beyond the academics. “It’s a great community… I pass students just hanging out on the [Gates] Quad… chatting, even amongst the faculty themselves… I am digging this place. I really, sincerely, truly am.”
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