Jack Citrin

Jack CItrin smiling in a blue suit, white shirt, and matching tie
2007
Heller Professor of Political Science
Charles & Louise Travers Department of Political Science
Job title: 
Heller Professor of Political Science
Department: 
Charles and Louis Travers Department of Political Science
Bio/CV: 

Jack Citrin, Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, and former 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 latest book with co-author David O. Sears, American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Chapter 9 Online Appendix), was published in 2014 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.

Research interests: 
Political Sociology and Nationalism