Alexander Scott is a sociologist of politics, political economy, and racial and class inequality, with a specialization in Latin American and Latino Studies. His work examines how racialized capital accumulation, neoliberal restructuring, and crises of political legitimacy shape contemporary forms of far-right and authoritarian politics — and the social movements that rise to contest them — across the United States and Latin America. He currently serves as Lecturer in the Latin American Studies Program at the University of California, Riverside, and teaches sociology at UC Riverside and Fullerton College.

Dr. Scott is completing his first book, Empire of Reaction: Capital, Crisis, and the Multi-Racial Far Right in Southern California. Drawing on some sixty interviews, original survey data, and three years of ethnographic fieldwork, it argues that far-right politics is best understood not as irrational or culturally pathological but as an organized political response to structural crisis, and it offers an original account of reactionary politics among second- and third-generation Mexican Americans; a chapter has been accepted in Oxford University Press's Studies in Subaltern Latina/o Politics series, where he has been invited to submit the full manuscript. His earlier work examined grassroots organizing against racialized policing, and a separate, ongoing project theorizes "dependent fascism," a distinct form of reactionary politics specific to Latin America, through the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. His work has appeared in Sociological Perspectives, Globalizations, Radical Americas, and Latin American Perspectives, and has been supported by the Haynes and Andrew W. Mellon foundations and recognized with a competitive SDICCCA Regional Faculty Fellowship, among other awards.

An award-winning teacher with nearly a decade in the classroom, Dr. Scott has taught at UC Riverside — a Hispanic-Serving Institution — and at Fullerton College, where his honors students regularly present their research at statewide conferences. He is deeply committed to mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds — first-generation, working-class, and students of color — drawing them into original research, guiding them toward graduate school and careers, and involving them in community-based and collaborative projects beyond the university. As a member of the editorial collective of Latin American Perspectives, he coordinates the journal's outreach and produces and hosts its podcasts. Before completing his Ph.D. (2025) and M.A. (2019) at UC Riverside, he studied social studies and Spanish at Soka University of America (B.A., Humanities, cum laude), and has lived, studied, and conducted research across Latin America since 2014.