Fox, Richard L. 1967–

(Richard Logan Fox)

PERSONAL:

Born October 21, 1967. Education: Claremont McKenna College, B.A.; University of California at Santa Barbara, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Loyola Marymount University, 1 LMU Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659. E-mail—richard.fox@lmu.edu.

CAREER:

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, associate professor of political science; previously associate professor and chair of the political science department at Union College, Schenectady, NY; served as visiting professor at Rutgers University, College Year in Athens, and colleges affiliated with Mumbai University.

WRITINGS:

Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1997.

(With Robert W. Van Sickel) Tabloid Justice: Criminal Justice in an Age of Media Frenzy, L. Rienner (Boulder, CO), 2001, 2nd edition, 2007.

(With Jennifer L. Lawless) It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

(Editor, with Susan J. Carroll) Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to various journals, including Political Psychology, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Social Problems, PS, and Politics and Gender, as well as to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.

SIDELIGHTS:

Richard L. Fox was educated at Claremont McKenna College, where he earned his undergraduate degree. From there he continued on to the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he earned both his master's degree and his doctorate. Fox has served on the faculty of Union College in Schenectady, New York, where he was a member of the department of political science, as well as teaching as a visiting professor at Rutgers University, as part of the College Year program in Athens, Greece, and at several colleges affiliated with Mumbai University in India. As a member of the faculty at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, Fox is an associate professor of political science. His primary areas of research and academic interest include the United States Congress, the electoral process, the relationship between the media and American politics, and gender politics. Beyond his academic duties, Fox has contributed articles to a number of journals, including Political Psychology, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Social Problems, PS, and Politics and Gender. He has also written essays for the op-ed pages of a number of prominent newspapers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Fox is the author or coauthor of a number of books, including Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections, Tabloid Justice: Criminal Justice in an Age of Media Frenzy, and It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office, as well as the editor, with Susan J. Carroll, of Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics.

Tabloid Justice, which Fox wrote with Robert W. Van Sickel, was first published in 2001, with an updated second edition following in 2007. The book addresses the ways in which the media has gradually shifted its style of reporting news, specifically news related to crime, so that the reports are sensationalized and hyped up, often out of proportion to the seriousness of the event. This heightened version of news reporting, which Fox and Van Sickel compare to the less-serious, and often less-factual tabloid news reports due to the similarity of tone, appear to be geared solely toward building readership and repeat viewers, rather than to the honest reportage of a situation. However, because these media outlets are considered historically truthful and reliable—unlike the tabloid outlets—they have far more influence over their readers and viewers and therefore have a lasting impact on the impression that the average person has regarding the justice system. The 2001 edition of the book focused on six examples of high-profile criminal cases that were tried during the 1990s, including the William Kennedy Smith rape trial, the Rodney King battery case against the police officers accused of brutalizing him, the Menendez brothers' trial for the murder of their parents, the O.J. Simpson trial for the murder of his wife, the trial of nanny Louise Woodward, and the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. The book also looks back at journalism in earlier eras and provides a comparison between the media reaction to major events of those years and the frenzy so apparent in more recent times. Thomas Shevory, in a review for the Law and Politics Book Review Online, commented: "What is most valuable about Tabloid Justice is its attempt to provide a systematic account of what many of us of a certain age have no doubt come to take for granted, i.e., that the quality of news coverage has declined over the last few decades in such a way as to collapse the distinction between ‘news’ culture and the rest of the mass entertainment industry." The updated edition of the book notes that the tabloid journalism issue is still prevalent, but goes on to analyze how the events of September 11th, 2001, and the reports that came after it, have led to some differences in media behavior.

It Takes a Candidate, written with Jennifer L. Lawless, addresses the question of women's progress in the political arena. While women have made huge strides in general in recent decades, climbing higher on the executive scale in any number of industries and taking on riskier, more dangerous positions in a number of fields, they are still painfully underrepresented in American politics, with virtually no women holding the higher government positions. Fox and Lawless include a number of theories, and have based much of their findings on extensive research they have done into the political process, including interviews they held to determine why people of either sex choose to run for political office, while others chose not to run. Elizabeth S. Smith, in a review for the Political Science Quarterly, observed that "Lawless and Fox have identified through this important research a significant obstacle to women's representation: low levels of political ambition. Given that the youngest women in their sample have the lowest overall ambition, it seems unlikely that great progress toward equality in representation in the United States will occur soon."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, September, 1999, Barbara C. Burrell, review of Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections, p. 713; September, 2002, review of Tabloid Justice: Criminal Justice in an Age of Media Frenzy, p. 636.

Canadian Journal of Political Science, September, 1998, Manon Tremblay, review of Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections, p. 596.

Canadian Public Policy, September, 2006, Brenda O'Neill, review of It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office, p. 346.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June, 2001, G.B. Osborne, review of Tabloid Justice, p. 1828; March, 2006, M.A. Saint-Germain, review of It Takes a Candidate, p. 1305; December, 2006, M.A. Saint-Germain, review of Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics, p. 719.

Contemporary Sociology, March, 2006, review of It Takes a Candidate, p. 196.

Journal of Politics, August, 1998, Sue Tolleson-Rinehart, review of Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections, p. 914.

Political Science Quarterly, spring, 2002, Diana Owen, review of Tabloid Justice; summer, 2006, Elizabeth S. Smith, review of It Takes a Candidate.

Prairie Schooner, spring, 2002, review of Tabloid Justice.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 1997, review of Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections, p. 54; November, 2007, review of Tabloid Justice, 2nd edition.

Signs, spring, 2000, Janet A. Flammang, review of Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections.

Women & Politics, fall, 1999, "Sex as a Political Variable: Women as Candidates and Voters in U.S. Elections."

ONLINE

Canadian Journal of Sociology Online,http://www.cjsonline.ca/ (April 17, 2008), R.L. Ogmundson, review of It Takes a Candidate.

Law and Politics Book Review Online,http://www.bsos.umd.edu/ (February 1, 2001), Thomas Shevory, review of Tabloid Justice.

Loyola Marymount University Web site,http://www.lmu.edu/ (April 17, 2008), faculty profile.