David Crabtree is an Instructional Assistant in Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he received an MA in 2023. He is interested in the temporal sequence of democratic backsliding, quantitative methods, and the politics of presidential term limits. His thesis examined which democratic institutions were frequently undermined early and late in declining democracies with term limits. Drawing on new data, it considers how term limits, by constraining executive tenure, might incentivize would-be autocrats to dismantle some democratic institutions before others. An additional project studies the effectiveness of unamendable term limit provisions.

Before joining as an Instructional Assistant, David was a research assistant for Professor Monika Nalepa's Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability Lab at the University of Chicago and a math tutor at Malcolm X College in Chicago. In addition to the MA from UChicago, he holds two BAs in Political Science and International Affairs from East Tennessee State University.