Phillip Atiba Goff

Phillip Atiba Goff joins Yale as Professor African American Studies and Psychology. He was the inaugural Franklin A. Thomas Professor in Policing Equity at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is the co-founder and president of the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), and an expert in contemporary forms of racial bias and discrimination as well as the intersections of race and gender. Goff serves as a Principal Investigator for the CPE’s National Justice Database, the first national database on racial disparities in police stops and the use of force. Goff led the CPE in becoming one of three Principal Investigators for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, which will contribute information to the National Justice Database. Goff conducts work exploring the ways in which racial prejudice is not a necessary precondition for racial discrimination. Despite the normative view of racial discrimination—that it stems from prejudiced explicit or implicit attitudes—his research demonstrates that situational factors facilitate racially unequal outcomes. Goff’s work has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Justice, Russell Sage Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Open Society Institute-Baltimore, Atlantic Philanthropies, William T. Grant Foundation, the COPS Office, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the NAACP LDF, NIMH, SPSSI, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, among others. He was a witness for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and has presented before Members of Congress and Congressional Panels, Senate Press Briefings, and White House Advisory Councils.