Justin Phillips

Professor Phillips is an absolute gem! The material is interesting and makes you appreciate the ways in which major civil rights action happens at the state level. You begin with a few weeks on federalism and then focus specific units on civil rights issues like reproductive rights, gay marriage, and immigration. The pacing is also fair and readings aren't difficult to understand. Mainly, however, I would say take this class because Professor Phillips is genuinely just a nice person and a great professor. Definitely go to office hours to chat with him.

TAKE A SEMINAR WITH JUSTIN PHILLIPS!!! It may seem daunting because you have to read a book a week, but really you only have to read as much of the book as you want because you can pretty much say whatever you want in class and he'll agree with you. Justin is so dang nice and literally said "I'm used to grading grad students so i never give out anything lower than a B+". As someone who hates doing readings and slacks off a lot, I really liked this class and thought the readings were really interesting. Learned so much and he is amazing!

I think that he is a great person. He is a great guy. However, he is a boring lecturer who teaches everything from the textbook. He talks pretty fast and his slides are just full of texts. His exams are fair, but it really depends on the TAs. Personally, my TA was not helpful at all.

I took Direct Democracy, one of the American Politics seminars in the Political Science department with Professor Phillips, and it was an amazing class. Professor Phillips really rocks in a seminar setting. He's good at leading the discussion. By that, I mean he gets the discussion going by posing some questions about the reading and building up the discussion based on what the class has gleaned from the reading. However, he's also good at letting the students go back and forth on a point if the discussion gets really interesting. Which it did, since some of the topics we covered included Gay marriage/ Prop 8, The referendum on Gov. Grey Davis and subsequently Arnold.

Survey of the key academic theories on various institutions in the US poltiical system

I took this class to complete the secondary sub genre part of the poll sci major, and it turned out to be my favorite class in college so far! Prof. Phillips is a really nice and easy to talk to guy and knows a lot about the subject material. He is easy to get a hold of when you need help or questions and I preferred reaching out to him instead of the TAs. I was considering switching majors, but because of Phillips I'm going to stay a Poli Sci major. I didn't spend much time on the class overall throughout the semester (while after the midterm I basically stopped reading and went to only have the lectures). Still passed the classes with my highest grade this semester and when it came to the exams, I felt very relaxed about the questions and essays. Overall, Loved the class and loved the professor!!!!

This is the best seminar I've taken at Columbia, and the best class I've taken in the political science department here. I almost didn't take the class because I was skeptical about the limited scope of the syllabus (Gays and Lesbians instead of a broader intersectional LGBTQ analysis). However, the readings in the class were one the highlights of my semester, and Professor Phillips is amazing at leading discussions. He's very open to critiques of the class and the readings, and it led to many interesting classes. You can do fine in discussion without doing all of the reading, but I found myself doing all the reading thoroughly each week because I was learning so much that I had never come across before.

This class was not very difficult, but Professor Phillips is a great lecturer and made the material engaging and relevant.

I love Professor Phillips! Sure, this class will seem much like your high school civics class, but he really is a nice guy who cares about the material. I think he actually recognizes that the department is sticking him with the Intro class since he's a younger professor, but he always tries to make jokes and keep people awake as we go over the three kinds of grants-in-aid. Professor Phillips is also a real gem when you go to his office hours. He's always willing to help you with the material and even help you with questions from other political science classes. The class is pretty simple, just make sure you cite the heck out of readings in your exams if you want to really do well

Understood the history and development of US political institutions and judiciary