The Charles Hamilton Houton Institute for Race & Justice (CHHI) seeks to hire a team of Research Assistants to help in the implementation of the Guinier Project.
The Guinier Project is named after Professor Lani Guinier and seeks to carefully consider the impact that voting systems reform could have on racial communities and democratic representation. The Project is particularly interested in the effect of moving from a winner take all system of elections to semi-proportional and proportional systems of representation and the effects such a shift would have on racial representation.
The team would work with Professor Guy-Uriel Charles, Charles Ogletree, Jr. Professor of Law and Faculty Director of CHHI, and Alora Thomas, the Strategic Director of Litigation and Advocacy at the CHHI, along with a distinguished group of academics around the nation working as part of the Guinier Project research network. The work should take 10 to 20 hours a week. The team will help organize the Guinier Project research network, provide assistance to the network in their research, and engage in research with CHHI and its collaborators.
Suitable candidates will currently be in a PhD program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, including but not limited to the Government, Public Policy, Social Policy, Statistics and Comp Science programs. (Joint PhD and JD candidates will also be considered.) We are interested in candidates with a background in quantitative analysis of electoral systems, field research on political participation, or race and political participation. Candidates must have excellent oral and written communication, be well organized and a have deep interest in racial justice and electoral reform.
Interested candidates should send a CV and a cover letter to Alora Thomas-Lundborg (tthomaslundborg@law.harvard.edu) and CHHI email address (houstoninst@law.harvard.edu). This position will be filled on a rolling basis.