Rashawn Ray

Dr. Rashawn Ray is a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. He is also a Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is one of the co-editors of Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public. Formerly, Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and he currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for the RWJF Health Policy Research Scholars Program.

Ray regularly testifies at the federal and state levels on racial equity, policing and criminal justice reform, health policy, wealth, and family policy. Ray has published over 50 books, articles, and book chapters, and roughly 50 op-eds. He has written for Washington Post, New York Times, Business Insider, Newsweek, NBC News, The Guardian, The Hill, Huffington Post, The Conversation, and Public Radio International. Ray has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, BBC, CBS, C-Span, PBS, NPR, HLN, and Al Jazeera. His research is cited in Washington Post, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Root, and The Chronicle. Previously, Ray served on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington Planning Committee and the Commission on Racial Justice with Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Ray’s research addresses the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and social inequality with a particular focus on police-civilian relations and men’s treatment of women. His work also speaks to ways that inequality may be attenuated through racial uplift activism and social policy. His academic articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Science Advances, Social Science Research, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Du Bois Review, and the Annual Review of Public Health. Ray’s books include How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work (with Pamela Braboy Jackson) and Race and Ethnic Relations in the 21st Century: History, Theory, Institutions, and Policy, which has been adopted over 40 times in college courses.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D in Sociology, Indiana University
• M.A. in Sociology, Indiana University
• B.A in Sociology, University of Memphis