Event Spotlight
An interdisciplinary workshop with Professor Phillip Goff, co-founder and executive director of research for the Consortium of Police Leadership in Equity
Professor Goff is a nationally recognized expert in contemporary
forms of racial bias and discrimination, as well as identity-based
inequality across multiple domains including gender, sexuality, class,
and ableness.
He is a prolific researcher investigating the dynamics
of stereotype threat, stigma, interracial conflict, and mental
representations related to prejudice. In his recent work, he has
sought to understand the role of race in relations between police
officers and the communities they serve, and this interest led him to
co-found the Consortium of Police Leadership in Equity,
By facilitating innovative research collaborations between law
enforcement agencies and world-class social scientists, the Consortium
“seeks to improve issues of equity–particularly racial and gender
equity–in policing both within law enforcement agencies and between
agencies and the communities they serve.”
Professor Goff’s workshop will examine how one explains and addresses persistent racial disparities in light of the perceived strides in reducing explicit racial prejudice. Common social psychological wisdom explains this disconnect by insisting that racial prejudice has merely "gone underground," that prejudice is still responsible for inequality but is now more subtly expressed. Yet this formulation seems hollow to Professor Goff--and worse, misleading. In this presentation, he will discuss his research on racial bias in law enforcement and how it might reveal a competing approach to the common wisdom. His hope is that the framework of this research might reveal how social science can be used not just as a tool to understand inequality but as a tool for remedying it.
Our library features three papers written by Professor Goff:
