Courses in this MPP core sequence examine how social categories, group-based cleavages, and inequalities shape contemporary leadership and policy challenges. The modules equip students with core knowledge, analytic approaches, and professional skills to understand and navigate how institutions and policies interact with dynamic, contested, and conflictual group-based identities and hierarchies. Through a diverse set of complementary module-length courses addressing race, ethnicity, gender, indigeneity, caste, class, and more, this sequence grounds questions and debates about identity, intergroup conflict, unequal treatment, and shifting social and political boundaries in rigorous empirical and historical perspective. This course is a four-credit sequence in which you'll take two half-semester modules selected out of seven options (note: some modules are offered twice). See full list of options here.
Sections E1/E2 (Spring 2): Desmond Ang. Racial Inequality in the U.S.: An Empirical Perspective
This module seeks to provide a broad empirical understanding of the causes and consequences of racial inequality in America across a range of domains - from housing and education to criminal justice and labor markets. Students will learn about the state of racial inequality today and historically and will gain the analytical skills necessary to unpack the drivers of those trends.
This course is required of all MPP1 students.