Khalilah Brown-Dean
Dr. Khalilah L. Brown-Dean is the Peter Strauss Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Yale University. She is a Resident Fellow of the Institute for Social and Policy Studies and a Research Fellow at the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. Dr. Brown-Dean received her Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University in 2003 and a B.A. in Government from The University of Virginia in 1998. In Spring 2005, Professor Brown-Dean convened a national conference in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 entitled, “Lessons From the Past, Prospects for the Future.”
Professor Brown-Dean’s work stands at the intersections of law, politics, and policy with specializations in American Politics, mass political behavior, crime and punishment, and political psychology. She has published work on issues such as voting rights, group identity and public opinion, civic engagement, and the race-education nexus. In 2004 she introduced a new course on Black and Jewish Community Politics. It is the first course of its kind to examine interactions between the two communities from a Political Science framework. Her work in this area garnered a $100,000 research grant from the Ford Foundation’s “Difficult Dialogues” Initiative. She also teaches courses on Power, Politics, and Punishment; African American Politics; Voting Rights and Representation; Public Opinion; and Ethnic Politics in the US. Professor Brown-Dean is a recipient of the Henry R. Spencer Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Graduate Associate Teaching Award, and has been recognized by the American Political Science Association and Pi Sigma Alpha for Outstanding Teaching in Political Science. In 2007 she received the Wilma Holmes Tootle Educational Advancement Award from the North Atlantic Region of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
Professor Brown-Dean’s current research agenda focuses on the political dynamics surrounding the American criminal justice system. Her book manuscript (under contract with the Yale University Press), Once Convicted, Forever Doomed: Race, Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement, and Fractured Citizenship, explores the tension between crime control policies and notions of citizenship. Her dissertation, One Lens, Multiple Views: Disenfranchisement and Political Equality, received the Best Dissertation Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Her research on the criminal justice system and voting rights policy have garnered international attention. As Advisor to the National Presbyterian Church’s Voting Rights and Electoral Reform Committee, Brown-Dean’s research has been used to inform public policy debates as well as lobbying efforts. Professor Brown-Dean is completing a second book manuscript, Diversity and Democracy, that evaluates the quest for democratic inclusion through the lens of ethno-racial identity. She was named a 2009 Justice Advocacy Senior Fellow by the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute and is a past recipient of the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Research.
Dr. Brown-Dean has served as a political analyst, advisor, and commentator for CNN, PBS, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Crisis Magazine, the Comcast Network, and several governmental agencies, community organizations, and international media outlets. She provides expert consulting on issues related to voting rights policy, the criminal justice system, and racial and ethnic politics. She has guest lectured at leading universities including Oxford University in England and presented the inaugural address for the University of Rochester’s Two Icons Lecture Series.
Dr. Brown-Dean is a native of Lynchburg, Virginia where the City’s Mayor proclaimed May 6, 2006, “Dr. Khalilah L. Brown-Dean Day and presented her with a key to the city.
Campus address: TBA
Phone: 432-6040
Email: khalilah.brown-dean@yale.edu
C.V.
For office hours, click here.
