Jason Opal is Professor of History and Dean and Director of the Mansfield campus of the Ohio State University. He did his BA work in history at Cornell University and his graduate level studies at Brandeis University, after which he taught at Colby College (2003-2009) and McGill University (2009-2024) before coming to Ohio State. His major research and teaching areas are early American and United States history, especially in the fields of social, cultural, and legal history, the American Revolution, and the US Constitution. His first book, Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2008 and built on research that won the Binkley-Stephenson Award for Best Scholarly Article by the Organization of American Historians. His second monograph, Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, was named to both the History Book Club and the Military Book Club in the United States and as one of the best summer books by The Times of London. Jason also edited Common Sense and Other Writings by Tom Paine in 2012 and has published more than two dozen scholarly articles and over sixty opeds in newspapers such as The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, and other venues in the US and Canada. He also teaches in historical epidemiology, with particular interests in smallpox, yellow fever, and plague and co-published several papers in this field with his late father, an MD specialist in infectious diseases. At Colby, Jason won the Charles Bassett Award for outstanding teaching, awarded by the graduating class of 2006; at McGill, he served as Graduate Program Director and Chair of the History Department, as a Provost's Mentor and University Harassment Assessor, and as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies.