Jamila Celestine Michener

Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University

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About Jamila

Michener specializes in the field of American politics, with a particular focus on the political precursors to and consequences of poverty and racial inequality. Her research aims to identify and examine the conditions under which economically and racially disadvantaged groups engage in the political process. Particular topics that animate this agenda include: the effects of state policies on the political engagement of the poor, the relationship between neighborhood disorder and local political participation, the determinants of state compliance with the public assistance provisions (section 7) of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the contextual determinants of political interest and efficacy among low-income populations. Michener’s research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, Michener received her PhD in political science from the University of Chicago (2011) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship as a Health Policy Scholar at the University of Michigan (2011-2013).

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

How Medicaid Programs Run by the U.S. States Influence Citizen Participation

Basic Facts Brief, August 2014

No Jargon Podcast

Episode 175:
Groundbreakers, part 1

May 2019

Episode 35:
The Overlooked Section

May 2016

In the News

Quoted by Tatiana Sánchez in "Does Racism Make Us Sick? Amid a National Reckoning, the Question Gains New Importance," The San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2020.

Quoted by in "‘When I Hear Black Lives Matter, I Want to Focus on the Lives.’ After Policing, a Host of Other Systems Await Reform," The Boston Globe, June 25, 2020.

Opinion: "The 2019 Government Shutdown is Just the Latest Reason why Poor People Can’t Bank on the Safety Net," Jamila Celestine Michener, The Conversation, January 14, 2019.

Research discussed by Jeff Spross, in "Welfare's Customer Service Problem," The Week, August 21, 2017.

Opinion: "People Who Get Medicaid are Made to Feel Powerless. That Pushes Them out of Politics and toward Fatalism.," Jamila Celestine Michener, The Washington Post, August 17, 2017.

Opinion: "Why We Shouldn’t Drug Test Poor People," Jamila Celestine Michener (with Julilly Kohler-Hausmann), New York Times, June 28, 2017.

Research discussed by Kurlya Yan, in "Profs Describe How Issues of Race Sway Voter Groups in Election," Cornell Sun, October 28, 2016.

Opinion: "Playing Offense on Voting Rights," Jamila Celestine Michener, The American Prospect, June 10, 2016.

Opinion: "Perceptions of Risk and Social Disorder Can Have a Huge Impact on Local Political Engagement," Jamila Celestine Michener, American Politics and Policy, London School of Economics Blog, December 12, 2013.

Publications

"Neighborhood Disorder and Local Participation: Examining the Political Relevance of ‘Broken Windows’" Political Behavior 35 (2013): 777-806.

Investigates the implications of neighborhood disorder – graffiti, litter, public intoxication and the like – for political behavior, taking particular care to distinguish between the objective tangible conditions of disorder and residents’ subjective interpretations of those conditions.

African American Women: Intersectionality in Politics (with Cathy J. Cohen and Andrew Dilts), in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, 1865-Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Claude Steele, Lawrence D. Bobo, Michael Dawson, Gerald Jaynes, Lisa Crooms-Robinson, and Linda Darling-Hammond (Oxford University Press, 2012), 492-519.

Employs an intersectional approach with a historical focus in order to examine the political participation (broadly construed) of African-American women from Reconstruction to the present milieu.

Minority Report: Kanye West, Barack Obama and Political Alienation (with Cathy J. Cohen), in Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics, edited by Cathy J. Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2010), 108-155.

Identifies comparatively high levels of political alienation among African-American youth and examines why such attitudes persist, despite young Black people (ostensibly) having more opportunities than ever before and notwithstanding the groundbreaking presence of an African-American in the oval office.