Liz Cheney will begin a career in academia following the end of her time in Congress.
The former Wyoming Congresswoman lost her Republican Primary against Harriet Hageman, the Wyoming native and attorney endorsed by President Donald Trump in 2021.
The University of Virginia announced on March 1 that Cheney is joining its Center for Politics as a professor of practice.
“Preserving our constitutional republic is the most important work of our time, and our nation’s young people will play a crucial role in this effort,” Cheney said in the announcement. “I look forward to working with students and colleagues at the Center to advance the important work they and others at the University of Virginia are doing to improve the health of democracy here and around the world.”
Cheney and her family lived in Virginia before moving to Jackson Hole in 2012. At the time, Cheney told reporters the move was not about politics but rather about bringing her children closer to their grandparents. Cheney is the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney.
Cheney unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Wyoming in 2013, failing to oust incumbent Republican Mike Enzi. She then launched a congressional bid in 2016 when then-Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis announced she would retire at the end of her term. Cheney won that election and was re-elected twice.
Cheney has never been able to shake her reputation as a carpetbagger.
“She assumed she could come back from Virginia, buy a house in a resort town in northwestern Wyoming, and that people would just fall all over themselves to support her because her last name is Cheney,” Wyoming Republican operative Bill Cubin told The Atlantic in 2016. “I think it was hubris, I think it came across that way, and I think that has stuck.”
Cheney voted to impeach President Donald Trump in January 2021 and was the vice chair of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6. The former State Department official and Fox News contributor has said she will not be a Republican if Trump is the party’s nominee in 2024.
Hageman defeated Cheney during the August 2022 primary. At the time, Cheney said all “Republicans, Democrats and independents” who “believe deeply in freedom and who care about the Constitution and the future of the country” need to put their party affiliations second.
The director of the UVA Center for Politics Larry Sabato said, “With democracy under fire in this country and elsewhere around the world, [Liz Cheney] serves as a model of political courage & leadership.”
Cheney is the second Republican who voted to impeach Trump to pursue academia after their political careers. Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse left his office in the middle of his term to become the President of the University of Florida.
