Steven Light
Steven Andrew Light is Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy at the University of North Dakota.
Steve provides strategic leadership to enrich teaching and learning and promote faculty and student success. His portfolio focuses on academic mission and vision and developing, implementing, and coordinating high-impact academic initiatives stemming from the university's Exceptional UND strategic vision. Steve coordinates undergraduate program evaluations, co-chairs the university's Diversity Advisory Council and Enrollment Management Planning Committee, and serves on the Executive Committee for UND's Higher Learning Commission regional accreditation efforts. He serves on the VPAA Academic Cabinet, provides oversight to the Essential Studies and Honors Programs, and works closely with the Director of Assessment and Regional Accreditation and the Offices of Instructional Development, the Registrar, and International Programs.
Steve is widely recognized as a leading expert on Indian gaming, federal Indian law and policy, and tribal-state-federal intergovernmental relations. His fifty publications include three books on tribal gaming, the first of which, Indian Gaming and Tribal Sovereignty: The Casino Compromise, was featured on C-SPAN2's Book TV. Steve has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and is a regular commentator in such media as the New York Times, Boston Globe, and NPR. He and regular collaborator Kathryn R.L. Rand (Dean, UND School of Law) have delivered invited lectures at numerous institutions, including American University, Boston University, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and blog on tribal gaming at Indian Gaming Now.
Steve teaches American government, constitutional law, race politics, and the senior capstone in political science. Among other honors, he received UND's highest annual award for overall faculty excellence and was the 2010 nominee for CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year. His publications on higher education include teaching about race and affirmative action, incorporating American Indian tribes into the curriculum, Historically Black Institutions, and capstone design and assessment of student learning.
Before coming to UND, Steve served as a Civil Rights Analyst in the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, where he enforced the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on those experiences, his latest book is "The Law is Good": The Voting Rights Act, Redistricting, and Black Regime Politics (2010).
Steve loves the outdoors and recently ran his first marathon.