Improving the discipline of political science and making it a more equitable and inclusive space has defined the career of Dr. Paula D. McClain. Dr. McClain entered the profession at a time when few recognized the importance of racial and ethnic politics, and many were inhospitable to scholars from marginalized communities. Nevertheless, Dr. McClain not only amassed an impressive scholarly record but, through her mentorship in the field, she also cultivated a new generation of scholars and pushed the discipline to accommodate their many perspectives. She was able to do this not by coercion but rather through her leadership and an unwillingness to compromise on the centrality of racial and ethnic politics as a constitutive field of study in political science.

As Dr. McClain ascended to the highest levels of academic, administrative, and professional leadership, she remained steadfast in her commitment to scholarship and to building diverse and inclusive scholarly communities. As a scholar, Dr. McClain has pursued several research avenues, including works on urban politics and urban violence and their disproportionate effects on Black communities. It was in the pursuit of this research that she found her intellectual niche. In studying American cities, she realized that they were less Black and white and more Black and Latino, which set her on a career-defining intellectual pursuit. Across several articles, she sought to understand the nature of these changing racial dynamics as well as the political implications for these groups and their members. This seemingly modest question yielded numerous complicated findings that Dr. McClain has pursued throughout her career. Among Dr. McClain’s most enduring intellectual contributions is her pioneering work, coauthored with Joseph Stewart, Jr., Can We All Get Along? Racial and Ethnic Minorities in American Politics (McClain and Stewart Reference McClain and Stewart1995). Among the first comprehensive treatments of American racial and ethnic minority group politics, their book combines a wealth of demographic, institutional, and survey data to analyze the promise and peril that American political institutions and political engagement portend for these groups. Can We All Get Along? is now in its eighth edition, with the two most recent editions coauthored by Jessica Johnson-Carew and Dr. McClain (Reference McClain and Johnson-Carew2018). It remains a highly regarded text that provides rich historical and contemporary analyses of the political stakes for American racial and ethnic minority groups and their members.

Since the initial publication of Can We All Get Along?, Dr. McClain has worked with many scholars to reanalyze the meaning of coalition and competition among groups. She has pioneered work on Black–Latino relations in the South, where the demographic shifts wrought by immigration—primarily from Mexico—upended received knowledge about the future of Black and minority politics. Moreover, she founded the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Social Sciences at Duke University, where interdisciplinarity and collaboration are encouraged to better understand the complex dynamics that Dr. McClain has highlighted in her work for more than 40 years. Her work clearly outlines the barriers to interracial coalition and how many of our institutions are constructed to encourage competition. Not only is Dr. McClain interested in what groups think about one another, she also is deeply invested in how democratic institutions can help or hinder intergroup advancement.

In addition to being a dedicated university professor and administrator and a leading voice in the discipline, Dr. McClain has served as director of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) for 30 years. RBSI alone has created a pipeline of hundreds of underrepresented scholars who have contributed greatly to the discipline. By training 20 undergraduate students in political science research every summer (and taking some of them to the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting), Dr. McClain ensures that mainstream political science actively and routinely includes the voices of marginalized scholars. Moreover, she has directly trained cadres of students at Duke University and the University of Virginia, where she singlehandedly made racial and ethnic politics (REP) a field of study at those institutions. As an architect of the field, Dr. McClain appreciates how central young scholars are to the intellectual growth of the field. She encourages intellectual innovation while also believing in a strong foundation of grantsmanship and collaboration. She is a frequent coauthor with graduate students, and she teaches the importance of fundamentals including reading broadly, writing clearly, and making evidence-based conclusions.

Through her role as director of RBSI, Dr. McClain used Can We All Get Along? to introduce new generations of political scientists to the discipline and to the study of REP. In doing so, Can We All Get Along? was foundational and, ultimately, canonical for a generation of scholars. It played a central role in their intellectual development, exposing budding scholars of varying scholarly interests and perspectives to the study of race and ethnicity in politics, while surely motivating some of these scholars to develop REP research interests. Yet, the reach of Can We All Get Along? extends beyond RBSI scholars, who have contributed to diversifying the discipline and its scholarship.

The care that Dr. McClain demonstrates in her scholarly research and mentorship is the same care she demonstrated during her time as president of the American Political Science Association (APSA). In 2020, as APSA president, Dr. McClain spearheaded a task force to study systemic inequality in the discipline. Despite a global pandemic, Dr. McClain’s commitment to this work did not waver. She realized that this nation was facing a multifaceted pandemic that included classism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, and gender exclusions that were amplified by COVID-19. Unfortunately, our discipline is not immune to these societal challenges, and Dr. McClain’s approach of having the discipline look inward to change practices that reinforce the exclusion of minoritized communities was a necessary intervention (McClain and Mealy Reference McClain and Mealy2022).

In her 2021 APSA presidential address, Dr. McClain invoked the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois in reflecting on the racism that was so pervasive (and perverse) to the intellectual roots of political science as an academic discipline (McClain Reference McClain2021). Du Bois likened John William Burgess—the “father of American political science” (Maness Reference Maness1977, 352)—to Roger B. Taney, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, whose majority decision in the Dred Scott case reified the exclusion of Black people from American citizenship and political life. Burgess (Reference Burgess1905, 133) notoriously claimed that “black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself succeeded in subjecting passion to reason; has never, therefore, created any civilization of any kind.” McClain highlights Du Bois’s efforts to counter Burgess’s problematic intellectual legacy in Black Reconstruction (Reference Du Bois2012/1935, 381), in which Du Bois also lamented the fact that this “great political scientist in one of the oldest and largest of American universities wrote and taught thousands of youths and readers” such absurd and harmful racial essentialism. Dr. McClain’s career and scholarship continue Du Bois’s work and legacy by disrupting the historical and cultural powers of our discipline that reify the marginalization of scholarship centering or produced by members of American racial and ethnic minority groups.

Dr. McClain is an exemplary scholar who has dedicated her career to research, teaching, and service that has yielded countless accomplishments, including her election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her career demonstrates what is possible when one is dedicated not only to scholars’ advancement but also to the realization and development of their talents. The merits of her career are undeniable, and the discipline owes a debt of gratitude to this pioneering scholar and mentor.

The contributions to this special issue are dedicated to honoring the extraordinary work and legacy of Dr. McClain and the enduring significance of Can We All Get Along? Thirty years after its publication, Can We All Get Along? still implores us to ponder a question that remains as critical as it has ever been to global and national politics, as well as to the academy and the discipline of political science. During this moment of retrenchment—as governments, private industry, and educational institutions retreat from the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion that Dr. McClain endeavored to ensure were critical to our disciplinary consciousness—it is an especially useful and important time to reflect on the enduring significance of racial and ethnic intergroup relations to American life and politics and to the political science discipline. More personally, however, this special issue reflects our gratitude to Dr. McClain, the person who inspired so many of our career trajectories and supported our advancement every step along the way.