Michael Bitzer, Ph.D.

• Professor of Politics and History
• Director, Center for North Carolina Politics & Public Service
• 2011-12 Swink Professor for Excellence in Teaching
• B.A., Erskine College (English)
• M.A., Clemson University (History)
• Ph.D., School of Public and International Affairs, The University of Georgia (Political Science)

A professor of politics and history at Catawba since 2002, Dr. Bitzer's teaching interests are in American politics, public administration, public policy, and the law, courts and judicial process area. His research interests are in Southern politics, North Carolina politics, campaigns & elections, and voter behavior. He also directs Catawba’s Center for North Carolina Politics & Public Service, which oversees the Catawba-YouGov Surveys of North Carolinians.

In 2021, Dr. Bitzer authored the book, Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina: Battlelines in the Tar Heel State, which explores the past forty years of politics and litigation over one of the most partisan activities in American politics. In this study, Bitzer explores each decade, since the 1980s, of lawsuits and partisanship when it comes to drawing both congressional and state legislative district lines.

Bitzer is also the author of several book chapters on North Carolina politics, including The New Politics of the Old South: An Introduction to Southern Politics, The 2024 Presidential Election in the South, and The 2020 Presidential Election in the South. He also wrote a book chapter on The Simpsons and political culture and public opinion, based on a course, "Society & The Simpsons," which he taught for the Freshmen Seminar program. The book was awarded the 2009 Cawelti Award for Best Textbook/Primer on American popular culture by the Popular Culture Association.

He has been interviewed by local, state, national, and international news outlets on American politics and the politics of North Carolina, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Irish Times, The Raleigh News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer, ABC, NBC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, London Broadcast Company, France24, and the Australian Broadcast Corporation, among others. He also founded, manages, and writes for the political blog, Old North State Politics.

Dr. Bitzer earned an undergraduate degree in English from Erskine College and a master's degree in history (focusing on modern American history, Southern US political history, and the history of Nazi Germany) from Clemson University. Before working on his doctorate, Dr. Bitzer was a newspaper reporter and public affairs director at Clemson University. During his doctoral work from The University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs, he was the one of five graduate student recipients of the university's Excellence in Teaching Award. In the 2011-2012 academic year, he served as the Swink Professor for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for classroom teaching at Catawba.

Dr. Bitzer likes to engage in asking important questions about the course content, and uses those questions to guide class discussions. He believes that the value of a liberal arts education is to challenge students to resist the easy answers, but to instead search for those that are worthy of consideration.

When he's not on campus, you can usually find him watching either an ACC or SEC football game, or (the highpoint of his sports life) an ACC basketball game. He is an amateur-professional photographer, often focusing his lenses on waterfalls and barns in Western North Carolina and shooting his son's sports activities.