Washington, D.C.
Caleb
Johnston
M.A. candidate in American Government at Georgetown University. Focused on democratic accountability, constitutional governance, and justice-sector reform.
Washington, D.C.
M.A. candidate in American Government at Georgetown University. Focused on democratic accountability, constitutional governance, and justice-sector reform.
Background
I study American Government at Georgetown University because I want to better understand how institutions shape people's lives — and how public service can make those institutions more just, responsive, and humane.
My work sits at the intersection of governance, direct service, political education, and community-centered public action. At Georgetown, I have served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and worked with the Prisons and Justice Initiative, supporting reentry-focused programming and engaging with the practical challenges people face as they prepare to return to the community.
I earned my B.A. in Government and Economics from the University of Texas at Austin, where I built an interdisciplinary foundation in political institutions, economic analysis, and empirical research.
My interests center on governance, institutional design, democratic accountability, political behavior, and the ways public systems can better serve marginalized communities. Across my work, I try to combine evidence-based analysis with grounded experience — studying institutions carefully while staying close to the human realities that make institutional reform necessary.
The throughline is service: understanding systems, working with people, and trying to help build institutions worthy of the communities they are meant to serve.
Work
Deputy Campaign Manager
Support field operations, volunteer coordination, voter outreach, and day-to-day campaign logistics for Bernita Carmichael's Ward 5 D.C. Council campaign. Draft communications, coordinate outreach materials, and keep the campaign organized and responsive as it engages residents across Ward 5.
Reentry Assistant, Prisons and Justice Initiative
Serve as a first point of contact for students, community members, partner organizations, and third parties at PJI's office. Support the Paralegal Program, Making an Exoneree initiative, and broader reentry services. Provide one-on-one support to clients navigating housing, paperwork, and reentry needs, and assist with programming for incarcerated individuals inside jail and prison facilities.
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Served as GTA for two courses — The U.S. Political System (Prof. John Griffin) and Introduction to International Relations (Prof. William Schlickenmaier) — supporting approximately 40 students. Led weekly discussion sections, created slides and review guides, held office hours, and graded participation, essays, exams, and research papers.
Political Research Assistant
Supported Prof. Bethany Albertson's "Winners and Losers" project on U.S. elections and political rhetoric from 2000 to 2024. Coded approximately 100 victory and concession speeches using a structured thematic framework tracking democratic norms, election legitimacy, and political language. Entered election data into a collaborative dataset with thousands of records.
Team Leader
Worked across multiple roles — waiter, headwaiter, bartender, and to-go server — at high-volume locations in Austin and Houston. Regularly served 50+ guests per shift, managed roughly $1,500 in sales per shift, trained new staff, and communicated with guests in English and Spanish.
Academic
M.A. in American Government
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C. · 2025–2026
GPA: 3.96
Identity Politics · Executive Branch Policymaking · Intergovernmental Relations · Social Movements in Action · Technology, Security & Identity · Statistical Analysis in Political Science · M.A. Capstone: Leadership and Process
B.A. in Government & Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX · 2020–2024 · GPA 3.67
Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude & Ampla Cum Laude Distinctions
Politics of Law · Politics of Healthcare · Constitutional Interpretation · Economics of Education · Econometrics · Causes of War · American Studies
Recognition
Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo Scholarship
2020–2024
Texas Excellence Scholarship
2020–2024
AI Fluency for Students
Anthropic · June 2026
Supervised Machine Learning Certification
Stanford University / DeepLearning.AI · 2025
Academic Distinctions
Cum Laude Ampla et Magna · Ampla Cum Laude · Magna Cum Laude · UT Austin
GRE: Verbal 160 · 84th Percentile
V160 / Q157 / AW4.5 · December 2024
Scholarship
Reentry, Governance, and the Role of Nongovernmental Organizations
This paper examines how nongovernmental reentry organizations and their frontline practices mediate the transition from incarceration to community reintegration — and what this reveals about reentry as a problem of governance.
Drawing on scholarship in mass incarceration, prisoner reentry, and public administration, the paper argues that reentry is not simply what happens after punishment ends, but one of the ways punishment can continue to operate. It uses Georgetown University's Prisons and Justice Initiative as a qualitative case study to examine how frontline reentry work either interrupts, softens, or reproduces that continuation of punishment.
The expected contribution is to show that nongovernmental reentry organizations do more than provide services — they help govern the transition from incarceration to community life by interpreting institutional rules, mediating access to resources, and shaping how returning citizens experience reintegration.
Recreational Marijuana Legalization and Manufacturing Work Hours: A State-Level Econometric Analysis
This paper examines whether recreational marijuana legalization is associated with average weekly hours worked by production employees on manufacturing payrolls across U.S. states. Using 2021 state-level data, I estimate an OLS regression model controlling for education, obesity, minimum wage, family size, region, and demographic composition.
The results show that states with legalized recreational marijuana are associated with approximately 1.2 fewer average weekly manufacturing payroll hours, a relationship statistically significant at the 10 percent level. The cross-sectional design limits causal interpretation; the findings are best understood as exploratory evidence that cannabis policy may correlate with broader state-level labor-market patterns.
Winners and Losers: Electoral Rhetoric and Democratic Norms
This faculty research project examined how U.S. political candidates communicate after electoral victory and defeat, with attention to democratic legitimacy, concession behavior, unity appeals, voter fraud claims, and references to democratic norms across presidential, Senate, gubernatorial, and House races from 2000 to 2024.
As research assistant, I collected and organized candidate outcome data, located and logged public statements and press coverage connected to victory and concession contexts, and applied qualitative coding indicators for democratic-norm language — including unity appeals, fraud claims, recount references, and candidate-to-candidate communication.
Connect
I welcome conversations about public policy, democratic reform, and career paths in public-interest work.