About the Department

On Leave Fall 2009

Jennifer Hochschild joined the Government Department in January 2001, and is now the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor Government, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Harvard College Professor. She also holds lectureships in the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Education. Prof. Hochschild studies the intersection of American politics and political philosophy -- particularly in the areas of race, ethnicity, and immigration -- and educational policy. She also works on issues in public opinion and political culture. She is the co-author of The American Dream and the Public Schools (Oxford University Press, 2003); and author of Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation (Princeton University Press, 1995); The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation (Yale University Press, 1984); and What's Fair: American Beliefs about Distributive Justice (Harvard University Press, 1981). She is also a co-author or co-editor of other books and articles. Her current project is tentatively entitled Blurring Racial Boundaries: Skin Color, Immigration, Multiracialism, and DNA. Prof. Hochschild was the founding editor of "Perspectives on Politics", published by the American Political Science Association. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a former vice-president of the American Political Science Association, a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, and a former member of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey. She served as co-chair of the Program Committee for the annual convention of the APSA in 1996. She has received fellowships or awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Spencer Foundation, the American Political Science Association, the Princeton University Research Board, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the DuBois Institute, the Center for American Political Studies, the Mellon Foundation, and other organizations. She has served as a consultant or expert witness in several school desegregation cases, most importantly Yonkers Board of Education v. New York State. She has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and was twice a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study. Professor Hochschild taught at Duke University and Columbia University before going to Princeton in 1981, where she was William Steward Tod Professor of Public and International Affairs before coming to Harvard. She teaches courses on racial and ethnic politics, American political thought, power in American society, and inequality and social policy.

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