Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. He is the author of five books, including Poverty, by America (2023) and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Carnegie Medal, and PEN / John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. The principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, Desmond’s research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award. A Contributing Writer for the New York Times Magazine, Desmond was listed in 2016 among the Politico 50, as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate. Mustafa Emirbayer is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A past chair of the ASA Theory Section and winner of the Lewis Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda-Setting in Sociology, Emirbayer’s research includes historical studies on the teaching of morality and citizenship in American public schools and theoretical studies on race, social networks, culture, agency, collective emotions, the public sphere and civil society, revolutions and social movements, organizations, and democracy. He is the co-author (with Matthew Desmond) of The Racial Order (2015). Karida Brown is a sociologist, professor, oral historian, and public intellectual whose research centers on the fullness of Black life. She is a proud graduate of Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University. Her previous roles include professor of sociology at UCLA, the inaugural director of racial equity and action at the Los Angeles Lakers, and the inaugural Diane Nash Descendants of Emancipation Chair at Fisk University. She currently serves as a professor of sociology at Emory University. Dr. Brown is the author of several books, including The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families, which recently won the 55th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Literary Work. Her next book, Battle for the Black Mind is forthcoming with Legacy Lit by Hachette Book Group. Dr. Brown resides in Atlanta, GA, with her husband, artist Charly Palmer, and their two pugs. Victor Ray is the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor in the departments of sociology and criminology and African American studies at the University of Iowa and a Carr Center fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research applies critical race theory to classic sociological questions. His work has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, American Sociological Review, American Behavioral Scientist, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Contexts, Ethnic and Racial Studies, The Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Sociological Theory. His work has won multiple awards, including the early career award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities and the Southern Sociological Society’s Junior Scholar Award. Victor is also an active public scholar, publishing commentary in outlets such as The New York Times, Time, CNN, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and Boston Review. Victor’s work has been funded by the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation. His first book, On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care was published by Random House in 2022.
