In his first year at the University, Assistant Professor of Government Elvin Lim has become one of the most prominent new professors on campus. Besides being frequently featured on the front page of the University website for his quotations in newspapers across the country, he was also a featured speaker at the Wesleyan Student Assembly’s (WSA) Election Night party and appears on numerous panel lectures on American politics. Despite all of these commitments, students say that Lim still manages to conduct lively class discussions.

“I think he’s one of the best teachers I’ve ever had in my life,” said Simon Davis-Millis ’12, a student in Lim’s “American Government and Politics” course.

Besides this class, Lim is also teaching a course this semester entitled “Political Communication,” and will teach a class on “The American Presidency” this spring.

Lim, who attended Oxford University and previously taught at the University of Tulsa, also wrote “The Anti-Intellectual Presidency,” a book that analyzes presidential speeches from Washington to Clinton and Jefferson.

“There are two ways to read the book,” Lim said. “One would be a layperson’s understanding about “dumbing down [in presidential rhetoric.] The perspective I teach in class is a subtler understanding…that rhetoric is a barometer for the health of our democracy.”

So far, Lim has enjoyed the University’s dual emphasis on professorial research and teaching.

“Wesleyan professors are called to be teachers and scholars,” he said. “I think that’s a healthy paradigm to have because it allows for a reflexive relationship between teaching and researching, and very often one informs the other.”

The topics of Lim’s current research projects include gender and the American presidency, critical elections as the manifestation of a “lover’s quarrel” in the Constitution between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, and the immigration debate. Lim believes that his research is inextricably tied to his work in the classroom.

“I frequently get insights in class that force me to think about my own research, and teaching my own research inevitably makes me a more passionate teacher,” Lim said.

At a Nov. 7 lecture on the lessons of the 2008 election, Lim had a chance to show off his “pundit side” as well. He began the evening with a thoughtful talk on re-aligning elections in America. Upon learning the other professor was unable to attend the lecture as scheduled, however, he also took on their talking points about the role of race and gender in the campaign.

As a professor, Lim stresses that ideally all points of view should be represented in his class.

“I wish we taught freedom of speech more,” he said. “And we were more willing to create conditions where people who held alternate views were more willing to share them in class.”

Lim adds that it’s his students’ constant engagement with class material that often impresses him most.

“The best times for me are when late at night, at two a.m., some student emails me [about] some random thought I made in class,” he said. “And he or she shows me that, even at two a.m., he or she is still thinking about it, and they continue to interrogate me about it. That tells me that people are thinking, that I’m doing my job. These private moments when I recognize that what I’m saying is making people think that really reward me.”