About

Jamila Michener is a professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University. Her research focuses on American politics and policy, particularly the political causes and consequences of poverty and racial inequality. She studies the conditions under which economically and racially marginalized communities gain power over political processes and examines the role of the state in shaping the political and economic trajectories of those communities. Michener is the author of several books, including 'Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics' and 'Uncivil Democracy: How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power,' and she is a co-editor of 'Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis.' She is the Inaugural Director of the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures and serves as Senior Associate Dean for Public Engagement at the Brooks School of Public Policy. Her work has been supported by numerous prestigious organizations, and her public writing has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Vox. Michener works closely with community-based organizations across the country to apply research insights to address urgent problems facing racially and economically marginalized communities.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Computer Security
• Political economy
• Positive economics
• Law and economics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Uncivil Democracy

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2026-01-27

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Descriptive Analysis of Tenant Right to Counsel Law and Praxis 2017–2024

  Housing Policy Debate · 2025-04-25 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  This article provides the first comprehensive description of state and local tenant right to counsel (RTC) policies. From July 2017 through June 2024, five states, 17 cities, and one county passed legislation to formally create a right to legal counsel for tenants in eviction proceedings. These policies contain heterogeneous provisions, including their intended purposes, design and administration requirements, eligibility criteria, and when in the eviction process the right is triggered. This study describes laws as adopted in legislation through policy surveillance and legal mapping methods and examines how policies are executed on the ground through qualitative methods that capture the perspective of multiple stakeholders. The pairing of policy surveillance and legal mapping techniques with qualitative interviews demonstrates where real-world implementation both meets and diverges from legislative requirements and identifies barriers that prevent full implementation of the right to counsel, as well as its systemic benefits. In light of the dearth of national information on implementation of RTC programs, the descriptive, qualitative, and analytic framework detailed herein provides researchers, policymakers, and practitioners with instructive insights for evaluating, refining, and advancing RTC policies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Beyond Access to Justice

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-09-04

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How do diverse groups of Americans respond to (structural) messages about racial health disparities?

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2025-04-29

  otherOpen access

  Widespread racial disparities in health outcomes persist in the United States in part due to systemic factors that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. These disparities are inequitable in that they are driven by longstanding patterns of racism and oppression and can be addressed through the design, passage, and implementation of public policies that remove racial barriers to upward mobility. Past research suggests that messaging strategies which identify specific populations as either disproportionately affected by health and social issues or potential beneficiaries of policies to address those issues tend to undermine support for public policies across a wide variety of health and social issues. However, studies have also identified specific message characteristics that may limit or counteract this general pattern. This randomized experiment tests the effects of including information about structural determinants in messages about racial health disparities. Using messages about COVID-19-related racial disparities, we test the effects of including this information on cognitive/emotional, policy belief, and behavioral outcomes predictive of political mobilization among different racial/ethnic groups. We also explore interactions between message strategy, race/ethnicity, political partisanship, and internal political efficacy in relation to the study outcomes.

  Publisher

• Beyond fear of backlash: Effects of messages about structural drivers of COVID-19 disparities among large samples of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White Americans

  Social Science & Medicine · 2025-04-24 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Although U.S. health disparities are well-documented, the very communities that bear the brunt of those disparities are, ironically, underrepresented in scientific efforts to understand and address them. In two experiments (total N = 9523), we explored the consequences of omitting those perspectives for efforts to understand and address disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that, by prioritizing the perspectives of White Americans, studies of pandemic disparities likely missed important insights. Specifically, we purposively sampled the four largest racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. and found that people of color were consistently more concerned, and more willing to engage in both individual and collective efforts to address health disparities, than their White counterparts. In addition, messages highlighting structural drivers of health disparities further bolstered support for inequality mitigating policies.

  PublisherDOI

• Medicaid Cuts are Undemocratic and Not What the American People Want

  2025-06-12

  report1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Why Building Power Is Key to Protecting Academic Public Health and Advancing Health Equity

  American Journal of Public Health · 2025-10-08 · 3 citations

  editorialOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• State Child Tax Credits Are a Crucial Lever for Equity

  2025-03-27

  report1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ethical and Transformative Scholarly Public Engagement: Pitfalls, Possibilities and Promises

  Healthcare policy · 2024-09-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  At its core, public engagement is geared toward transformative ends - to change the world for the better. Yet, the means are also critical. Scholars who engage communities and public processes should do so ethically, in ways that comport with core values. Despite good intentions, however, researchers seeking to engage the public face substantial challenges. This paper highlights the pitfalls and perils associated with scholarly public engagement and points to the promise of ethical and transformative engagement - that is, engagement for sound reasons carried out in effective ways. I make the case that ethical and transformative public engagement requires that researchers remain aware of their position, attentive to who is being engaged and discerning about how to engage.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Building Power for Health: The Grassroots Politics of Sustaining and Strengthening Medicaid

  Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law · 2024-09-27 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  CONTEXT: Notwithstanding an impressive corpus charting the politics of Medicaid, there is still much to learn about the contemporary politics of sustaining, expanding, and protecting the program. There is especially scant scholarly evidence on the significance and function of grassroots political actors (i.e., the communities and groups most directly affected by health policy). This article explores the role such groups play in the politics of Medicaid. METHODS: This research is based on qualitative interviews with organizers and advocates working in the domain of health policy. FINDINGS: The power of grassroots actors in Medicaid politics is constrained by political and structural forces, including philanthropic funding practices, racism, and partisan polarization. Nevertheless, when bottom-up actors effectively exercise power, their involvement in Medicaid politics can transform policy processes and outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Grassroots actors-those who are part of, represent, organize, or mobilize the people most affected by Medicaid policy-can play pivotal roles within Medicaid politics. Although they do not yet have sufficient political wherewithal to consistently advance transformational policy change, ongoing political processes suggest that they hold promise for being an increasingly important political force.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jake Haselswerdt

  University of California, Merced

  11 shared

• Christopher Ojeda

  University of California, Merced

  5 shared

• Julianna Pacheco

  University of Iowa

  4 shared

• Mallory E. SoRelle

  Duke University

  4 shared

• Pamela Herd

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  2 shared

• Thomas B. Pepinsky

  2 shared

• Hilary Hoynes

  2 shared

• Brendan Nyhan

  2 shared

Education

• Phd, Political Science

  University of Chicago

  2011

• AB, Politics

  Princeton University

  2003

Awards & honors

• Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar