Since starting The Taft Institute in 1996 Professor Krasner has collaborated with the teachers of Townsend Harris High School and others to develop and refine a uniquely rigorous, ambitious, and engaging election simulation model, which has been successively adapted to presidential primaries and elections, New York City mayoral elections, New York State gubernatorial, senatorial, and legislative elections.  Working with Professor Francois Pierre Louis, Jr. of the Queens College Political Science Department, Professor Krasner developed a program of community leadership and citizenship training that since 2002 has trained activists from new immigrant, minority, and low income communities in New York City.  The Hazen Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, and New York Community Trust have supported this program with generous grants. 

In 2017 Professor Krasner started collaborating with a civic association in Forest Hills, Queens, and with the Forest Hills Branch of the Queens Public Library to develop programs of adult civic education.  The group, now called Let’s Talk Democracy, sponsors lectures by outstanding scholars, authors and activists,  including Frances Moore Lappe, Eric Foner, and Tim Wu, as well as an activism fair that promotes participation by acquainting members with various groups working in contemporary politics.  Professor Krasner lectures regularly for the group on the current state of American politics and acts as a technical advisor.

At Queens College, Professor Krasner taught the basic American government course as well as courses on Politics and Media, on presidential, gubernatorial, and mayoral elections, and on Film and Politics, and coordinated and expanded the Political Science Department’s internship program.  He received the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997.  The recipient of a Fulbright Exchange Professorship to the University of Aarhus in Denmark in 1983-84, Professor Krasner also taught there as a visiting professor and researcher in 1985-86.  In 1994 he was a visiting professor at the University of Paris VIII, (St. Denis).

Currently, Professor Krasner is working on a book length application of his Theory of Invited Behavior to the rise of Donald Trump in particular and the shape of current American politics in general.

 out as a social studies teacher on the South Side of Chicago. He was well on his way to a life-long interest in creativity in history, geography, and political science that has been at the core of five decades of work.

In two other researched books on “Teaching World / U.S. History as Mystery” (Routledge, 2010) Professor Zevin and his co-author, Dr. David Gerwin, take a strong position on teaching the subject of history as a mystery to awaken interest and to clearly set out three problems that make teaching global awareness so difficult: the all too human tendency to think of history in terms that are “ego-centric, ethno-centric, and econo-centric.”  The book presents history as an ongoing struggle for truth and reliability, rather than as a simple, settled set of conclusions. 

Professor Zevin also researched and wrote “Creative Teaching for All: In the Box, Out of the Box, and Off the Walls” (2013), a totally new book on giftedness, talent and creativity in teaching that includes suggestions for opening up to the use of imagination across subjects. Later, in 2016, he co-wrote “Teaching Geography as Inquiry” (2016, Rowman and Littlefield) with a Chicago colleague, Mark Newman.  That same year he was awarded the President’s Award by the New York Association of Teachers of Social Studies (ATSS/UFT), recognizing five decades of service in the metropolitan area for preparing, nurturing, and encouraging the many students he taught at Queens College.  One of his popular and most effective methods is the use of simulations and role-plays in social studies across subjects like economics, politics and history, with the aim of building creative and gifted instruction across subjects for a variety of classrooms, K-College.  Some of these can be see here.

For over 50 years, Professor Zevin has contributed what he hopes are innovative methods and materials to several fields within social studies education, with the aim of building creative and gifted instruction across a variety of subjects and classrooms.  He is still active in retirement, both teaching and learning at CUNY, teaching for a term in 2020 for Macaulay College and serving in the University Senate.  He is also part of adult education and co-directing two projects, the Taft Institute for Government and Civic Education with Professor Michael Krasner, and the Center of Economic Education with a former student, Mr. Don McLean who teaches high school in the New York public schools.  In an era where “getting to maybe” is an accomplishment in itself, Professor Zevin remains a dedicated fan of problem-solving and inquiry as a philosophy of teaching.