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RESEARCH STATEMENT

Active and equitable participation is an essential component of a well-functioning democracy. For

many, pathways to participation start early in life as children model their political behaviors after
those of their parents and guardians (Berelson et al. 1954, Campbell et al. 1960, Verba et al. 1995,
Torney-Purta et al. 2002). In fact, political identities form long before people are even eligible to
vote. This is true when it comes to the comprehension of political information (Druckman and
Lupia 2016), partisan identity (Niemi and Jennings 1991), and political interest (Prior 2018). Yet,
remarkably little is known about how young people come to participate in politics and how
political institutions shape these processes across racial and ethnic groups (Sapiro 2005). In
particular, we know little about how one of the most pervasive and intensive state institutions,
schools, shapes political behavior (Hochschild and Scovronick 2003). While existing work has
examined the impact of civic education on the acquisition of political knowledge (Niemi and Junn
1998, Gainous and Martens 2012, Martens and Gainous 2013, Niemi and Campbell 2016), levels
of political interest (Neundorf, Niemi, and Smets 2016), the development of certain political
attitudes (Langston and Jennings 1968, Martens and Gainous. 2012, Hope and Jagers 2014), and
political participation (Campbell 2006, Kahne and Sporte 2008, Levinson 2012, Callahan and
Muller 2013), less is known about the extent to which the precise content of these courses shapes
civic outcomes. While there is some evidence to suggest that course curricula ultimately do shape
the political attitudes and behaviors of young people (Torney-Purta 20012, Green et al. 2011),
these studies do not explore whether course content yields heterogeneous participatory effects
across racial and ethnic groups. This is a critical lacuna, particularly as the United States becomes
increasingly diverse and as technology transforms how we interact with one another and engage
in politics (Cohen 2010). With these changes occurring, are schools capable of living up to one of
their primary responsibilities: forging young citizens? (Du Bois 1903; Dewey 1916). Or, instead
of serving as cradles of democracy, do schools exacerbate existing inequalities and constrain
participation, especially among young people of color?

These questions comprise the core of my current dissertation research. Furthermore, they cohere
with my broader research agenda, which spans beyond schools and socialization to address the
politics of race and place. My work examines understudied forms of political expression such as
youth-led political protests and non-citizen voting initiatives as well as attitudes such as white rural
consciousness and the political preferences of gentrifiers. The underlying theme of my research is
that the study of political behavior must pay careful attention to racial and ethnic identity as well
as institutional and geographical contexts. These contexts fundamentally shape how people
participate in politics.

DISSERTATION DESCRIPTION

My dissertation examines how one pervasive state institution—schools—shapes the political

behavior of young people. I make three primary claims. First, I show that the content of traditional
civic education courses privileges the political experiences of white political actors. Second, I
argue that this phenomenon contributes to divergent political attitudes and behaviors across racial
and ethnic groups – most notably contributing to a racial gap in political engagement across a
range of measures. Third, rather than viewing traditional civic education courses as a way to
jumpstart youth political engagement, I find that other educational approaches that have been

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advocated for, but not widely used, can close the aforementioned gaps. The approach I focus on is
critical pedagogy, an educational philosophy that centers the agency and grassroots political action
of marginalized groups (Freire 1968, bell hooks 1994, Giroux 2011, Apple 2011, Seider et al.
2017). My dissertation is written as a book manuscript, divided into four sections, and utilizes a
mixed-methods approach. The introduction of the manuscript situates my work within the political
behavior and socialization literatures more broadly. Specifically, I demonstrate that political
socialization encompasses both micro- and macro-level processes (Sapiro 2005, 2). At the micro-
level, the study of political socialization examines how individuals engage in political development
and learning at home, in neighborhoods, and within civic and religious institutions (Hyman 1959;
Sapiro 2005, 3). Hyman (1959, 18) provides an early micro-level conception of political
socialization, defining it as an individual’s “learning of social patterns corresponding to [their]
societal positions as mediated through various agencies of society.” Contrastingly, macro-level
studies suggest that political socialization is a mechanism through which a nation is able to forge
a political culture which in turn fosters democratic functions and institutions (Almond and Verba
1963; Easton 1965; 1967; Sapiro 2005, 3). While examining micro-level sources of political
socialization such as families, neighborhoods, and community organizations is crucial, this
approach risks overlooking the role of state institutions in shaping political behavior. I argue that
examining the development of civic education policy and its subsequent effects on the political
behavior of young people allows for both a macro- and micro-level account of political
socialization. Citizenship education programs enable political institutions to forge a political
culture (macro-level) through state-mandated instruction in schools (micro-level). Given that
American political institutions have historically underwritten and reproduced social inequalities,
the role of such institutions in socialization processes raises major normative concerns regarding
equitable outcomes.

Section I consists of two chapters that interrogate the content of civics and American government
courses and explore how this content contributes to distinct attitudes and behaviors across racial
and ethnic groups. Chapter 1 uses archival research to trace the development of civic education
policy in the United States. By examining state legislative histories, education standards, curricula,
textbooks, and newspapers, I analyze the political motivations of those seeking to teach civics to
young people in schools. In particular, this chapter assesses the extent to which alternatives to
traditional civics curricula have been considered or implemented in schools. This chapter identifies
a link between political institutions and the content of civic education courses specifically. While
extant analyses of dozens of textbooks demonstrate that course content overwhelming promotes a
narrative that centers white political actors and downplays the role of American political
institutions in perpetuating injustices (Loewen 1995, Moreau 2003, Levinson 2012), less is known
about how institutions have contributed to the development of this content. Overall, I find that
efforts to incorporate resistance narratives and stories about racial and ethnic minorities
specifically (key aspects of critical pedagogy) have tended to result in highly contested legal battles
(see also Levinson 2012). Moreover, these debates tend to become more pronounced when race is
a particularly salient political issue (e.g. Reconstruction, The Civil Rights Movement, and Arizona
Senate Bill 1070). Analyzing the origin and content of these policies helps to explain the ways in
which state institutions contribute to macro-level socialization processes, promoting approaches
to civic learning in schools that preference narratives, values, and institutions that have tended to
benefit white Americans at the expense of people of color.

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Chapter 2 will be adapted from a completed paper forthcoming within the Journal of Race,
Ethnicity, and Politics. This paper argues that civic education courses and their curricula are
associated with distinct attitudes and behaviors across racial groups using statistical analyses of a
nationally representative sample of 15-25-year-olds. Using data from the Black Youth Project
(Cohen 2005), I find that civic education courses are associated with higher rates of external
efficacy among white youth, but not for black and Latinx youth. Contrastingly, civic education
courses appear to increase acts of public voice (i.e., protests and boycotts) among black and Latinx
respondents, but not for their white peers. In other words, this chapter argues that civic education
does matter, but a standardized approach to civics courses should not be assumed to yield
consistent outcomes across diverse student populations. Most importantly, it appears that
traditional civic education courses may contribute to racial gaps in both political efficacy and
multiple forms of political participation, including voting and contacting public officials. This
clearly reflects the aforementioned narratives that pay little attention to the histories and
experiences of marginalized groups (see Lowell 1995).

Section II consists of two chapters that present findings from an experiment I conducted in 24
classrooms across 10 Chicago-area high schools between September 2017 and April 2018. I made
multiple visits to each school and classroom during this period, taking the time to meet with
teachers to discuss their teaching practices, course syllabi, and to observe their classroom
environments and their interactions with students. Prior to beginning the study with students, I
explained that I was asking them to participate in survey about an American history textbook that
might be used in a Chicago area high school in the future. Specifically, I told students that I wanted
to know what they thought about textbook excerpts pertaining to three historical topics—
Abolition, the United Farm Workers Organization, and Chinese Exclusion However, I did not tell
students that they were being randomly assigned to read different texts. One condition – the control
– featured text from a commonly used American history textbook, typifying those covered in the
aforementioned analysis of current practices. The other – the treatment – featured text from a more
critical take on the same historical events. For example, the control text compares how a white
abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglas contributed to the abolitionist cause
using traditional participatory avenues such as the ballot box and newspaper publications.
Meanwhile, the treatment text focuses on how enslaved black people resisted the institution of
slavery using a number of tactics while also emphasizing that black abolitionists, and especially
women of color, faced discrimination from white abolitionists as well. In other words, the
treatment text is reflective of critical pedagogy: it places greater emphasis on people of color; (2)
downplays the role of individuals while elevating the movement as a whole; and (3) pays greater
attention to the power dynamics black folks had to navigate within the abolitionist movement. I
created my own textbook templates to ensure that the students were unaware that they were reading
different texts. While these pages looked identical, the text in each condition varied. After reading
the excerpts, students were asked a series of questions about their political attitudes as well as their
willingness to participate in a variety of political activities.

Chapter 3 presents results from this experiment, which was distributed to nearly 700 14-18-year
high schoolers in the Chicago area. I find that content that uses a critical pedagogical approach
leads young blacks and Latinxs to report greater willingness to participate in multiple forms of
politics relative to those who are exposed to a traditional curriculum. The intervention has no
negative effects on the willingness of white youth to participate in the same activities – it largely

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does not affect their participation one way or another. Most importantly, critical pedagogy appears
to close gaps in participation between white youth and young people of color across multiple
participatory domains. This challenges accounts of political socialization that downplay the
importance of educational content (Langton and Jennings 1968, Campbell 2006, Bruch and Soss
2018). Instead, I find that the content of civic education courses can play a formative role in
processes of political socialization, especially for young people of color even when presented in a
brief intervention. I believe this to be the first causal demonstration of an educational intervention
that can close racial gaps in political participation. This chapter is completed and currently under
review. Interestingly, however, I find that the effects of the treatment are most pronounced among
participants attending schools where teachers do not use critical pedagogy already; in short, there
is a pre-treatment effect. Chapter 4 presents descriptions of each of the neighborhoods and schools
that the experiment was conducted in. Since I see pre-treatment effects across schools, it is
necessary to explore contextual factors that explain why we should expect the treatment effects to
vary across communities in the first place. This foreshadows a later section of the book that
investigates what leads teachers to use critical pedagogy in their classrooms.

Section III will consist of one empirical chapter. Chapter 5 will draw from data collected in focus
groups with young people in the Chicago Metropolitan Area to see what reactions each of the
experimental conditions elicits. Each focus group will convene participants from the same
racial/ethnic group (Asian American, black, Latinx, and white). Participants will be asked to react
to the control and treatment conditions used in the experiment. They will first respond to these
passages independently using an annotated reading exercise before discussing their thoughts whole
group. Specifically, I am interested in whether one of the conditions elicits greater excitement
among the participants with regard to political participation. While the experiment discussed in
Chapter 3 demonstrates that content can bolster one’s willingness to participate in politics, it is
important to understand how young people process this information in order to theorize about
mechanisms that contribute to this outcome. While I expect role modeling and empowerment to
emerge as potential mechanisms, focus groups are essential in order to allow these ideas to emerge
naturally rather than presuming their existence based on experimental results alone (Seawright
2016). I plan to conduct these focus groups during the fall of 2019 and expect to have this chapter
completed by spring 2020.

Given that critical pedagogy appears to be effective in bolstering rates of political participation
among racially marginalized groups, it raises the question as to why this approach is not utilized
more frequently, especially in school districts with high concentrations of young people of color.
Section IV explores this question using a spring 2019 survey of over 300 Chicago Public School
social studies teachers. This survey identifies factors that explain how civics teachers employ
certain pedagogical tools over others. In other words, in order to tell a story about how policies
and course content shape political behavior, Chapter 6 will explore the extent to which teachers
serve as street-level bureaucrats, interpreting education standards in ways that ultimately affect
how their students start to think about politics and government. Preliminary analyses suggest that
these educators believe that social studies courses are meant to forge active citizens and are already
utilizing facets of critical pedagogy in their classrooms. Specifically, these data demonstrate that
educators who hold more liberal racial views and use less authoritarian child-rearing practices are
more likely to utilize critical pedagogy in their classrooms. However, in-depth interviews with 30
high school social studies teachers conducted during summer of 2019 demonstrate their ability to

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focus on citizenship within the classroom is seriously constrained by institutional hurdles such
College Board Standards and the desire of school administrators to use social studies courses as a
space to develop close-reading skills that they believe will boost standardized test scores (see
Levinson 2012). Yet, some teachers effectively navigate these hurdles, placing social justice and
civic engagement at the heart of their pedagogy. I expect to have this chapter completed by October
2019.

The book’s conclusion will synthesize the preceding chapters’ analyses. Overall, I present a
cohesive narrative that (1) charts the development of civic education curricula and their effects on
the political behavior of young people, (2) explains the role of teachers in determining how civics
is ultimately taught in the classroom, and (3) explores alternative pedagogical approaches that
better reflect the increasingly diverse makeup of the United States. This work reframes the political
socialization literature, demonstrating that schools and teachers play an important role in shaping
political behavior. While my research highlights ways in which civic education courses can be
adapted to prepare an increasingly diverse generation of young people for active participation
within American democracy, it also identifies institutional hurdles that would need to be
surmounted in order for these changes to become a reality.

In addition to making a unique contribution to literatures addressing race and ethnicity, political
socialization, and civic education, my dissertation research also speaks to my ability to effectively
create partnerships with outside institutions, including Chicago Public Schools, the second-largest
school district in the United States. Conducting research with minors and within schools is
extremely difficult due the various institutional review hurdles put in place by individual school
districts. Yet, nearly every chapter of my dissertation utilizes data that was collected with the
approval of multiple school districts in the Chicagoland area in addition to Northwestern
University. The experiment in particular required four separate institutional review processes,
which speaks to my ability to effectively design and implement ambitious projects that face
significant logistical challenges. Furthermore, effectively conducting research of this kind requires
a commitment to building and maintaining relationships with stakeholders outside of academia. I
believe that research is most powerful when it is placed into the hands of individuals who are
entrusted to institute policy change. The school districts and teachers that made this research
possible were provided with summaries of my findings every step of the way to ensure that the
knowledge produced by this project could be used to improve the educational experiences of young
people in Chicago.

OTHER RESEARCH

In addition to my dissertation project, my research broadly explores the politics of place. Between
2017 and 2019, I worked with Cathy Cohen and a team of researchers at the University of Chicago
on a public-facing report entitled Race & Place: Young Adults and The Future of Chicago.
Drawing from 200, in-depth interviews with 18-29-year-olds throughout the city, the report
highlights the ways in which young people experience Chicago differently across racial and
geographical lines. I conducted and coded 50 of the 200 interviews utilized in this report and was
the sole author on two sections: one about access to educational opportunities and a second that
explores the ways in which the experiences of young people of color challenge deficit-minded
portrayals of Chicago. The report gained a great deal of publicity during Chicago’s 2019 mayoral

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election, becoming a source of information frequently used by debate moderators to field questions
to candidates.

I am also working on three ongoing projects that further explore the politics of place. The first of
these projects is the "Portrait of National Protest Activity” with Northwestern Professor Traci
Burch. The goal of this project is to use content analyses of newspapers from every state between
2009 and 2016 to create a database that examines and documents (1) when and where protests take
place, (2) which issues spark political protests, (3) how many people attend, (4) the tactics used by
protestors, and (5) whether students organized the protest. This project provides a more complete
image of protest activity in the United States by enlisting a much larger database of newspapers
that allows us to capture local instances of activism that never receive national coverage. Existing
work addressing this topic tends to be limited to protest activity covered in national publications
such as the New York Times (Gillion 2013). For this project, I led a large team of over 20
undergraduate research assistants who have conducted the content analyses since the spring of
2017. Upon completion, I will use these data to (1) explore contextual factors that correlate to
whether young people organize protests, and (2) determine whether the tactics employed in youth-
led demonstrations differ from those in other protest activity. I expect to find that youth-driven
protest activity will be higher in areas where public school districts, colleges, and universities
maintain institutional structures that view activities such as walkouts and demonstrations as
important ways for young people to “do democracy” rather than activities that should be punished
(see Bruch and Soss 2018).

The second project, entitled “Race and Rural Consciousness,” is being conducted with Chris
Petsko, a Northwestern Ph.D. student in Psychology, and seeks to complicate conceptions of rural
consciousness by making race a central component of the analysis. Cramer (2012, 2016) defines
rural consciousness as a social identity that attributes “rural deprivation to the decision making of
(urban) political elites, who disregard and disrespect rural residents and rural lifestyles” (Cramer
2012, 517). Specifically, Cramer finds that rural Wisconsinites harbor high levels of distrust in
urban elites who “too often [aim to] cover the cost of social welfare benefits for lazy, undeserving
people” at the expense of “hardworking Americans” (2012, 526). Given that racial resentment has
been shown to be a powerful predictor of white public opinion on a number of policy issues
(Kinder and Sanders 1996), it is surprising that Cramer downplays the role of race in her
conception of rural consciousness. In fact, Cramer suggests that when rural Wisconsinites think
about urbanites, they envision white bureaucrats and university professors (2016, 86).

This concept has gained noteworthy attention over the past several years. In fact, the ANES 2018
Pilot Study included three separate rural consciousness questions. While measuring urban-rural
divides is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, the concept of rural consciousness would benefit from
greater theorizing, especially as it pertains to race. We hypothesize that rural Wisconsinites are
actually imagining black people when they talk about urbanites in certain cities, challenging the
assertion that rural consciousness is not about race. Given that the modern racism/symbolic racism
literature suggests that a key part of contemporary white racial attitudes is stereotypes about the
undeserving-ness of black people, we infer that a racialized white rural consciousness is at play
when racially diverse cities such as Milwaukee are called to mind.

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Chris and I travelled throughout rural Wisconsin during the summer and fall of 2019 to conduct a
reverse correlation imaging task to test our hypotheses in the field (Dotsch & Todorov, 2012). This
procedure allows researchers to estimate what it is that participants envision in their mind’s eye
when they are thinking of a particular group of people. Reverse correlation procedures occur in
two stages. In the first stage, participants are shown 300 pairs of blurry, black-and-white facial
images. Their task is to choose the face in every pair that looks most like a target group that the
researchers specify. For example, in our study, participants are asked to indicate which face in
each pair “looks more like a Milwaukeean/Madisonian.” In reality, none of these faces looks
inherently like a resident of either of these cities. However, researchers can create a morphed
average of all the faces participants choose in a particular condition—for example, all of the faces
participants choose that “look like a Madisonian”—and they can see if this morphed average looks
any different from the morphed average from a different condition (e.g., from a condition in which
participants choose which face “looks more like a Milwaukeean” in every trial). In the second
stage—a rating study—naïve participants who know nothing about the origins of these morphed
averages rate them on dimensions that the researchers care about. In our studies, we will have
naïve participants rate the morphed averages (e.g. “Madisonian,” “Milwaukeean”) on whether
these averages look more Eurocentric (white) or Afrocentric (black). Overall, we expect to find
that rural Wisconsinites will harbor negative attitudes towards both residents of Madison and
Milwaukee. However, we expect that individuals will think of black people when asked to imagine
Milwaukeeans while individuals who are asked to think about Madisonians will think of white
elites. This would demonstrate that the nature of rural consciousness must take both race and place
into account rather than just urban-rural divides.

This project, like my broader research agenda, aims to enhance our understanding of how place
shapes how people think about politics, especially as it pertains to race and ethnicity. We expect
to find that rural resentment is more complicated than the urban-rural divide framework would
suggest. Rather, we aim to show empirically that rural resentment comes in two varieties: one of
distrust toward urban elites, and one of condemnation toward the perceived beneficiaries of elite
decision-making. Moreover, we contend that these two forms of urban resentment are likely to be
underpinned by different racial assumptions.

The third project, entitled “The Political Ideology of Gentrifiers,” is being conducted with Tom
Ogorzalek and Kumar Ramanathan and seeks to identify the policy preferences of individuals
moving into gentrifying neighborhoods. This project utilizes data collected from an original survey
developed by Tom Ogorzalek, Traci Burch, Reuel Rogers, Kumar Ramanathan, and I as part of
the Chicago Democracy Project at Northwestern University. The survey was fielded by Nielsen in
January of 2019 and obtained a representative sample of 2,000 individuals living within the
Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as oversamples of rapidly gentrifying
neighborhoods, diversifying suburbs, and black suburbanites. Data analysis for this project is
currently ongoing and we expect to complete a draft of the paper in September 2019. Overall, this
project demonstrates that more attention must be paid to the political preferences of individuals
living in cities. While urban-rural divides are frequently invoked in discussions of American
politics, this study finds that there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the political preferences of
urbanites. Specifically, while individuals who move to gentrifying areas desire to live in
neighborhoods that are racially and ethnically diverse, they also support policies (i.e. increased
development and increased police presence) that disproportionally harm marginalized groups. This

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study aspires to deepen our understanding of the politics of place by exploring how individuals
living in one specific type of neighborhood hold political views that differ from other residents
living within the same urban center.

APPLICATION OF RESEARCH TO POLICY

Between June of 2018 and April of 2019, I also served as a civic learning consultant at the Obama
Foundation. In this role, I was entrusted to synthesize existing civic education research for the
organization’s staff. Though this role was originally meant to be a two-month commitment, the
Obama Foundation renewed my contract for an additional eight months due to their satisfaction
with my work. Like the research highlighted above, this partnership in particular speaks to my
ability to deliver research that is accessible and useful to consultants, policymakers, and
individuals working in nonprofits and foundations.

FUTURE RESEARCH

In the future, I plan to explore additional topics that deepen our understanding of civic learning,
racial and ethnic identity, and place. There are two research agendas I seek to highlight. The first
of these projects would examine the effects of new media literacy on the political attitudes and
behaviors of young people. The acquisition of political knowledge has long been associated with
higher rates of civic and political participation (Niemi and Junn 1998; Levinson 2012; Verba et al.
1995). However, the ways in which individuals allocate political knowledge has changed
dramatically in the age of New Media (Sparrow et al. 2011). At the same time, expanded access
to political information requires the development of civic skills that not only allow individuals to
effectively navigate and analyze sources of information, but ultimately enhance their belief in their
own ability to effectively participate in politics. In other words, rather than asking how extant
political knowledge shapes behavior, I am interested in whether teaching individuals how to
navigate the increasing availability of political information leads to a more fundamental shift in
their political attitudes. Given that political socialization largely occurs prior to adulthood, this
analysis would focus on high school students specifically (Prior 2018). Civic education courses
arguably provide a promising space for exploring this topic. This study would utilize an
experimental approach motivated by the following question: Can teaching high school students
how to effectively navigate and discern the validity of new media sources bolster political attitudes
commonly associated with higher rates of political participation? Given the increased salience of
fake news and unequal access to civic learning opportunities along racial and ethnic lines, the
normative stakes of this question are quite high.

The second project is being developed with Kumar Ramanathan, a Northwestern Ph.D. student in
Political Science, and will examine the effects of non-citizen voting policies on the political
attitudes and behaviors of non-citizens. In recent decades, several advocacy campaigns have
attempted to enfranchise noncitizens in municipal elections. While the most common site for
recent noncitizen enfranchisement has been school board elections, some jurisdictions have gone
further. As campaigns for noncitizen enfranchisement continue, it is important to explore how
noncitizens interpret and respond to enfranchisement, whether these policies influence immigrant
political incorporation more broadly, and the extent to which these policies create pathways for
noncitizens to participate in other forms of political participation. While the existing literature

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examines policy development, legal issues, and normative considerations concerning noncitizen
voting rights, the feedback effects of this form of enfranchisement remain understudied.
Specifically, we hypothesize that providing non-citizens with the right to vote in municipal
elections will increase their willingness to participate in other forms of politics as well. Although
this policy intervention affects very few communities at present, studying their consequences is
important for two reasons. First, as more jurisdictions debate extending voting rights to
noncitizens, such a study can better inform advocates and policymakers about downstream
consequences. Second, studying noncitizen voting can enable us to build theory about how gaining
rights or resources in one domain of political participation affects individuals’ and communities’
engagement in other domains.

These future projects fit thematically into my research agenda by examining the ways in which
institutional and geographic contexts shape political participation. Institutions such as schools will
continue to be an important point of analysis as education policymakers work to prepare young
citizens for active participation in a world where political information is readily available online.
Similarly, as municipalities work to incorporate noncitizens into political processes at the local
level, it is important to explore the downstream consequences on these policies in order to
understand how they affect the political behavior of understudied groups such as immigrants.

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