Ian Haney López is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on how racism has evolved in the United States since the civil rights era. He is the author of three books and his writings have appeared across a range of sources, from the Yale Law Journal to The New York Times.
Haney López’s current research is on the connection between racial divisions in society and growing wealth inequality in the United States. His most recent book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, lays bare how politicians exploit racial stereotypes to get voters to support policies that ultimately favor the very rich — and hurt everyone else.
Haney López has written books on the legal construction of both white and Latino racial identity, respectively White by Law and Racism on Trial. A constitutional law scholar, he has also written extensively on how once-promising legal responses to racism have been turned into restrictions on efforts to promote integration.
The John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, Haney López has been a visiting law professor at Yale, New York University and Harvard, where he also served as the Ralph E. Shikes Visiting Fellow in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. He holds a master’s in history from Washington University, a master’s in public policy from Princeton and a law degree from Harvard. In 2011, Haney López received an Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship, awarded to scholars whose work furthers the integration goals of Brown v. Board of Education. In addition, Haney López is a senior fellow at Demos.
