Dianne Pinderhughes

During her time at the Center, Dianne M. Pinderhughes will explore opportunities for national democratic renewal and survival for a book project, Triumphant Past and Future Failures? Civil Rights in the American Political System. The singular, linear nature of 20th century civil rights showed dramatic success, but that was followed by deterioration in institutional stability for the ‘civil rights movement’ and its accomplishments. As twenty-first century institutional structures and interests limit the participation of the newly empowered multiracial electorate, the issue for the future is what this century’s strategy for dealing with these newly developed racial constraints will be.

Pinderhughes studies inequality with a focus on racial, ethnic and gender politics and public policy, explores the creation of American civil society institutions by African Americans in the twentieth century, and analyzes their influence on the formation of voting rights policy.

Her publications include Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics: A Reexamination of Pluralist Theory (Cambridge, 1987). She co-authored Contested Transformation: Race, Gender and Political Leadership in 21st Century America (Cambridge, 2016) with Carol Hardy-Fanta, Pei-te Lien and Christine Sierra. She is co-author with Todd Shaw, Louis DeSipio and Toni-Michelle Travis of Uneven Roads: An Introduction to US Racial and Ethnic Politics (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2015, 2018).

Pinderhughes is the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Endowed Chair of Africana Studies and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She is a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute, a concurrent faculty member in American Studies, and an affiliated faculty member in the gender studies program.

Pinderhughes is President of the International Political Science Association (2021-23) and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. She was President of the American Political Science Association (2007-08), and President of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (1988-89). She was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2003-04).

For more information, please visit: https://politicalscience.nd.edu/people/dianne-pinderhughes/