Police are perhaps the most visible face of American government and the decisions they make have life and death consequences. This course explores major questions in the study of the politics of policing, including debates over the societal role of police, the impact of police on crime, racial bias in policing, strategies for…

A recent spate of controversial instances of police violence have reinvigorated national debates over the proper role of law enforcement in American society, the nature of police-citizen interactions and racial bias in the application of police tactics. The renewal of these debates coincides with the availability of unprecedented access to…

Causal inference methods have revolutionized the way we use data, statistics, and research design to move from correlation to causation and rigorously learn about the impact of some potential cause (e.g., a new policy or intervention) on some outcome (e.g., election results, levels of violence, poverty). This course provides an introduction…