Power & Inequality

DPI 386MC Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Courses in this MPP core sequence examine how social categories, group-based cleavages, and inequalities shape contemporary leadership and policy challenges. The modules equip students with core knowledge, analytic approaches, and professional skills to understand and navigate how institutions and policies interact with dynamic, contested, and conflictual group-based identities and hierarchies. Through a diverse set of complementary module-length courses addressing race, ethnicity, gender, indigeneity, caste, class, and more, this sequence grounds questions and debates about identity, intergroup conflict, unequal treatment, and shifting social and political boundaries in rigorous empirical and historical perspective. This course is a four-credit sequence in which you'll take two half-semester modules selected out of seven options (note: some modules are offered twice).  See full list of options here.

Section C (Fall 2): Randall Akee. Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Native-Born Status in Data and Public Policy Analysis

This module explores how evolving definitions and data collection practices have shaped the construction of racial categories in the United States and select international contexts. Students will investigate the origins and transformations of these categories over time and space, with a primary focus on the U.S. Through comparative analysis, we will consider how different countries approach race, indigeneity, and native-born status, and how these concepts intersect or diverge in policy and data. The course emphasizes the implications of these categorizations for evaluating policy and program effectiveness, highlighting challenges in consistency and interpretation across time. 

Course Notes

This course is required of all MPP1 students.