Institute of Governmental Studies | People | IGS Director

Jack Citrin

Director
Institute of Governmental Studies

Professor, Charles & Louise Travers Department of Political Science, 1970-present
Departmental Page

Biography

Jack Citrin, Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, and Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies, was born in Shanghai, China, and grew up in China and Japan. A graduate of McGill University (1961), he received the Sir Geoffrey Dawson Scholarship to study at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris in 1962-63 and received an M.A. degree from McGill in 1963. He received his Ph.D in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970 after spending a year on a Traveling Fellowship in the United Kingdom. He has taught at Berkeley since 1969 and during that time has held administrative appointments as Director of the State Data Program, Acting Director of the Survey Research Center, Faculty Athletics Representative to the NCAA, and Faculty Director of the Berkeley Washington Program. His writings include The Politics of Disaffection among American and British Youth (1969), written with David Elkins, Tax Revolt (1982, revised 1985), written with David O. Sears, California and the American Tax Revolt (1984), and How Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Shape the California Electorate (2002), written with Ben Highton.

Professor Citrin's next book, American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism, will be published next year by Cambridge University Press. With Nathaniel Persily and Patrick Egan, he is editor and co-author of Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversies, published in 2008 by Oxford University Press. Professor Citrin also has published numerous articles and book chapters on trust in government, the initiative process in California, immigration and language politics, and the future of national identity in the United States and Europe. Among these articles are "Personal and Political Sources of Political Alienation," "Presidential Leadership and the Resurgence of Political Trust," "Who's the Boss? Direct Democracy and Popular Control," "Language and Political Identity," "The End of American Identity?," "Multiculturalism in American Public Opinion," and "Can There Be Europe without Europeans?," "European Opinion about Immigration: the Role of Interests, Identities, and Information," and "Testing Huntington: Is Hispanic Immigration a Threat to American Identity?"

Professor Citrin has testified as an expert before legislative committees and served on Advisory Committees of the National Academy of Sciences. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American politics and political psychology and in 2004-05 was a finalist for the Distinguished Teaching Award on the Berkeley campus.

Abridged Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 1971
M.A., McGill University, 1963
B.A., McGill University, 1961

Research Awards

Planning Committee, American National Election Studies as part of National Science Foundation award for 1991 Pilot Survey and 1992 National Election Survey
Research Grant Award for Immigration and Citizenship Project, Chicano Latino Policy Project, University of California at Berkeley, 1993-1995

Administrative Appointments

Director, Berkeley Seminar in American Politics and Policy (Asia Foundation), Institute of Governmental Studies, Summer 1990, 1992

Selected Academic Senate and Campus Service

Executive Committee, UC Berkeley Washington Program
Committee on Educational Policy Subcommittee on American History and Institutions (Academic Senate)
Faculty Advisory Group, California Business-Higher Education Forum, Office of the President, University of California

Selected Publications

J. Citrin, D. P. Green, C. Muste, and C. Wong, "Public Opinion and Immigration Reform," Research Paper Series, Chicano Latino Policy Project, University of California at Berkeley, 1995
J. Citrin, "Affirmative Action in the People's Court," The Public Interest (Winter 1995)
J. Citrin and A. Campbell, "Immigration and Politics," in J. Lubenow, ed., California Politics (Institute of Governmental Studies Press, 1997)
J. Citrin, D. P. Green, C. Muste, and C. Wong, "Public Opinion Toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motives," Journal of Politics, Vol. 59, No.2 (May 1997)
J. Citrin, D. O. Sears, C. Muste, and C. Wong, "Multiculturalism versus Liberalism in Mass Opinion: Normative Consensus or Group Conflict," Public Opinion Quarterly, 1997
J. Citrin and S. Luks, "The Problem of Political Trust," Pew Charitable Trust Working Paper, 1998
J. Citrin and C. Muste, "Trust in Government and System Support" in J. Robinson, L. Wrightsman, and P. Shaver, eds., Measures of Political Attitudes (New York: Academic Press, 1999)
D. O. Sears, J. Citrin, S. Cheleden, and C. Van Laar, "Is Cultural Balkanization Psychologically Inevitable?" In D. Prentice and D. Miller, eds., Cultural Divides (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999)
J. Citrin, C. Wong, and B. Duff, "National Identity and Ethnic Conflict in America," in R. Ashmore and L. Jussim, Social Identity, Group Conflict, and Conflict Resolution, Rutgers Series on Self and Society, Vol. 3 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)
J. Citrin and S. Luks, "Revisiting Political Cynicism in an Angry Age," in J. Hibbing and E. Theiss-Morse, eds., Dissatisfaction with the American Political System (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
B. Cain, J. Citrin, and C. Wong, Ethnic Context, Race Relations, and California Politics (Public Policy Institute of California, 2000)
J. Citrin, D. O. Sears, C. Wong, and C. Muste, "Multiculturalism in American Public Opinion," British Journal of Political Science (Vol. 31, 247, 2001)
J. Sides, J. Cohen, and J. Citrin, "The Causes and Consequences of Crossover Voting in the 1998 California Elections," in B. Cain and E. Gerber, eds., Voting at the Fault Line: California's Experiment with the Blanket Primary (University of California Press, 2002)

Selected Conference Presentations

"The Continuing Sources of Political Trust," paper presented at the 1998 Hendricks Forum on Dissatisfaction with the American Political System, University of Nebraska
"When Self-Interest Matters," with Dennis Chang and Patricia Conley, paper presented at the 1999 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association

Selected Professional Activities

Executive Committee, Pacific Chapter, American Association of Public Opinion Research
Board Member and Secretary, Political Alienation Research Group, International Political Science Association
Chair and panelist at professional meetings (American Political Science Association, American Association of Public Opinion Research, International Political Science Association, American Psychological Association, Western Political Science Association, International Society for Political Psychology)

Jack Citrin's August 1, 2007 interview on "Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and American National Identity" (Part of the UCTV Conversations with History series)

Jack Citrin's October 3, 2008 interview with Kyle McCormick at CalTV's InFocus about the financial crisis and the election