Jeffrey R. Henig is Professor of Political Science & Education at Teachers College and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. He earned his B.A. at Cornell University in 1973 and his Ph.D. at Northwestern University in 1978.  Before coming to Teachers College in September 2002, he taught at George Washington University, where he served as Director of the Center for Washington Area Studies and as Professor and Chair in the Department of Political Science. His research over the years has focused on the boundary between private action and public action in addressing social problems. 

He is the author or co-author of  Neighborhood Mobilization: Redevelopment and Response (Rutgers, 1982), Public Policy and Federalism (St. Martins, 1985), Rethinking School Choice:  Limits of the Market Metaphor (Princeton, 1994), Shrinking the State: The Political Underpinnings of Privatization (Cambridge, 1998), The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics and the Challenge of Urban Education (Princeton, 1999), which the Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association named the best book written on urban politics in 1999; and Building Civic Capacity: The  Politics of Reforming Urban Schools (Kansas, 2001), which the Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association named the best book written on urban politics in 2001.  He is the co-editor of Mayors in the Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools (Princeton 2004).  

Professor Henig’s scholarly articles on topics like gentrification and displacement, community anti-crime efforts, privatization, race and urban politics, and education policy have appeared in such journals as Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Journal of Urban Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, World Politics, and Urban Affairs Review. Currently, he is studying and writing about the political dynamics surrounding charter schools.