Leah Wright Rigueur PhD

Professor Leah Wright Riguer is the Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. Leah’s research interests include 20th Century United States political and social history, and modern African American history. Her work emphasizes race, civil rights, political ideology, the American two-party system and the presidency. Leah currently leads Race and American Politics, a multidisciplinary series of seminars and roundtables, co-sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, and dedicated to the most pressing political and social issues related to race in the United States. Leah’s first book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton University Press, 2015) covers more than four decades of American political and social history, and examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagan’s presidential ascent in 1980. Currently, she is working on several projects, including a piece on black women and the Republican Party, an article on black “celebrity” and modern conservatism/neoconservatism, and a book manuscript on African American appointees in the Reagan and Bush administrations, with a focus on economic justice and social welfare policies. An historian by training, she received her B.A. in History from Dartmouth College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. Before joining the Kennedy School faculty, Leah was a professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.