Andrew D. Martin

Andrew Martin
Martin in 2024
15th Chancellor of Washington University
Incumbent
Assumed office June 1, 2019
Preceded by	Mark S. Wrighton
Dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts of the University of Michigan
In office 2014–2018
Preceded by	Terrence McDonald
Succeeded by	Anne Curzan
Personal details
Born	(1972-07-25) July 25, 1972 (age 52) Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.
Education	College of William and Mary (BA) Washington University in St. Louis (PhD)
Academic background
Thesis	Strategic decision-making and the separation of powers (1998)
Doctoral advisor	Lee Epstein
Academic work
Discipline	Political science
Institutions	Washington University in St. Louis University of Michigan

Andrew D. Martin (born July 25, 1972) is an American political scientist who is the 15th chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), where he also is a professor of political science, law, statistics and data science.

As an academic, Martin has contributed widely to the areas of judicial politics, quantitative political methodology, and applied statistics, with attention paid specifically to the U.S. Supreme Court.^[1]

Martin was raised alongside his two brothers in Lafayette, Indiana, where he attended Hershey Elementary School, East Tipp Middle School, and William Henry Harrison High School.  During that time he developed academic interests in politics and mathematics.

Martin earned his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in mathematics and government in 1994 and his Ph.D. in political science from WashU in 1998. He was assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1998 to 2000.

Martin returned to his alma mater WashU as a member of the political science faculty in 2000, just two years after earning his Ph.D. there. In 2006 he joined the faculty of the School of Law, where he played a key role in the launch of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law, serving as its founding director from 2006 to 2014. He served as chair of the Department of Political Science from 2007 to 2011 and as vice dean of the School of Law from 2012 to 2014.  In 2013 Martin was installed as the Charles Nagel Chair of Constitutional Law and Political Science.

From 2014-2018, Martin served as dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts^[2] (LSA) at the University of Michigan.^[3]

Martin was appointed WashU’s 15th chancellor by the university’s board of trustees on July 14, 2018.^[4] He began full-time service to the university on January 1, 2019, as Chancellor-elect, and began as Chancellor on June 1, 2019.

Since his tenure at WashU began, Martin has positioned three strategic pillars at the forefront of his vision: academic distinction, educational access, and the university’s role and impact “in St. Louis and for St. Louis.”^[5] That vision was translated into "Here and Next," a bold strategic plan for WashU's next era of impact, launched in October 2022.

Much of Martin's early chancellorship has been defined by the onset of COVID-19 and the university's operational and financial response.^[6][7] Notably, under Martin's leadership, the university was one of the first in the Midwest region to announce a residential campus shutdown and remote working operations, a decision that came ahead of local and state decisions to enforce similar restrictions. In addition, Washington University was one of the only higher education institutions in the United States to announce a delayed start, rather than an accelerated start, to the 2020 fall and 2021 spring academic terms and one of the first to reinstate retirement benefits and the university's salary merit increase program after the majority of institutions and organizations made similar budget cuts. During that time, scientists at the School of Medicine's McDonnell Genome Institute developed a saliva-based COVID-19 diagnostic test that is simple, fast, economical, and able to be utilized at a massive scale for screening and diagnostic testing.^[8]

In February 2019, one of Martin's first announcements as WashU's Chancellor was the creation of the university's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity (CRE2).^[9] CRE2 officially launched in August 2020 and utilizes field-defining research, innovative learning, and strategic engagement in order to transform scholarship, policy, and clinical interventions where race and ethnicity are at the center.^[10]

In June 2020, Martin outlined a set of action steps to address issues of racial equity on Washington University's campus and throughout the St. Louis region, including a cluster hire initiative for 12 new faculty with a research emphasis on race and ethnicity, enhanced pedagogy and curricular programming, collaborative efforts to reimagine the university's police force and campus safety, increased supplier diversity in contracting and construction projects, and more.^[11]

During his inauguration on October 3, 2019, Martin announced the WashU Pledge, a financial aid program that provides a free undergraduate education to incoming, full-time Missouri and southern Illinois students who are Pell Grant eligible or from families with annual incomes of $75,000 or less. The WashU Pledge covers the full cost of a WashU education, including tuition, room, board and fees.^[12]

In 2021, Martin announced "Gateway to Success," ^[13] a $1 billon investment in student financial aid that allowed WashU to shift to need-blind undergraduate admissions. This was followed in 2023 by the university adopting a no-loan financial aid policy,^[14] which removed federal loans for undergraduate students and replaced them with scholarships and university grants beginning in fall 2024.

In his 2019 inaugural address, Martin announced his intention for WashU to "double down on [its] role and impact in St. Louis."^[15] In 2024, he unveiled the university's renewed commitment to prioritizing the university's regional efforts, including a new off-campus headquarters for engagement with community-focused organizations, a new website to help community members navigate WashU's St. Louis initiatives, and the "In St. Louis, for St. Louis" campaign, which highlighted the WashU people and programs dedicated to building stronger partnerships and making an impact in the region.

The university’s efforts in the region also include offerings at the School of Continuing & Professional Studies, which offers a variety of degree and certificate programs tailored to meet the demands of the regional job market; and the St. Louis Confluence Collaborative for Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Practice, an initiative of the Here and Next strategic plan that serves as an organizing platform and convening unit for community-engaged research, teaching and practice across WashU, with St. Louis needs at the forefront. In addition, WashU’s total economic impact on the St. Louis region for the 2024 fiscal year totaled $8.8 billion ^[16] in direct and indirect contributions to the local economy.

On April 25, 2024, Martin engaged local police departments to respond to a pro-Palestinian protest on WashU’s Danforth Campus. A large group of demonstrators had attempted to set up an encampment and refused to leave campus after being instructed to do so by police over a period of more than three hours. The police crackdown led to approximately 100 arrests, including 23 students and 4 faculty members. The other individuals who were arrested were not affiliated with the university. A number of students and faculty faced disciplinary action as the result of the incident. A professor from another university was arrested while disrupting police as they were making arrests during the incident. He later claimed he was hospitalized for broken ribs and a broken hand after multiple officers tackled him.^[17] WashU students, faculty and community members responded with open letters and petitions to Martin for the university’s response to the protests,^[18] including Martin's decision to evict arrested students from campus housing, per the student code of conduct, and ban faculty who attended the protest from campus. Martin's actions were condemned by Representative Cori Bush ^[19] and City leadership and praised by national pundits ^[20] and some elected officials.^[21]

Martin is the author of “An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research,” which he co-authored with Lee Epstein, the Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at Washington University,^[22] along with “Judicial Decision-Making: A Coursebook,” which he co-authored with Barry Friedman et al.^[23] Throughout his career, Martin has received research funding from many organizations, including Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Science Foundation, and National Institutes of Health. In 2021, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[24]

In addition to his many publications, Martin's most notable scholarly achievements include the Martin-Quinn scores,^[25][26] where he and collaborator Kevin Quinn estimated the ideologies of U.S. Supreme Court justices, as well as his contribution to the Supreme Court Database, which documents and codes every decision by a U.S. Supreme Court justice since the Founding.^[27]

• CERL website
• Andrew Martin's website
• WUSTL Law Faculty page
• WUSTL Political Science Faculty page