DANIEL Q. GILLION, PH.D.
The Julia Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt Presidential Distinguished Professor
I am trying to tackle the big questions that help us understand and address racial inequality in America
Dr. Daniel Q. Gillion
Presidential Associate Professor
Professor Gillion's Story
Daniel Q. Gillion is the Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Gillion completed his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester, where he was the distinguished Provost Fellow. He later went on to become the Ford Foundation Fellow and the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at Harvard University as well as the CSDP Research Scholar at Princeton. He recently received the “brainy award” by being selected as the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2018-2020).
His research interests focuses on racial and ethnic politics, political behavior, political institutions, public policy, and the American presidency.
Professor Gillion’s first book, Political Power of Protest: Minority Activism and Shifts in Public Policy, demonstrates the influential role of protest to garner a response from each branch of the federal government, highlighting protest actions as another form of constituent sentiment that should be considered alongside public opinion and voting behavior. The Political Power of Protest was the winner of the 2014 Best Book Award from the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.
Professor Gillion’s recently completed book Governing with Words: The Political Dialogue on Race, Public Policy, and Inequality in America (Cambridge University Press) demonstrates that the political dialogue on race offered by presidents and congressional members alters the public policy process and shapes societal and cultural norms to improve the lives of racial and ethnic minorities, illustrating that mere words are a powerful tool for combating racial inequality in America. Governing with Words was awarded the 2017 W.E.B. Du Bois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.
Professor Gillion’s research has also been published in the academic journals Journal of Politics, British Journal of Politics, Electoral Studies, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law as well as in the edited volumes of Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. In addition to being a faculty member in the political science department at Penn, Professor Gillion is an affiliate faculty member with the Department for Africana Studies.