Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff

Dr. Goff is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the co-founder and president of the Center for Policing Equity, and an expert in contemporary forms of racial bias and discrimination, as well as the intersections of race and gender. Dr. Goff has conducted work exploring the ways in which racial prejudice is not a necessary precondition for racial discrimination. That is, despite the normative conceptualization of racial discrimination—that it stems naturally from prejudiced explicit or implicit attitudes—his research demonstrates that contextual factors can facilitate racially unequal outcomes.

Dr. Goff’s work has been recognized by NIMH, SPSSI, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation, and he is also the youngest member of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice advisory board for the Center on Race, Crime, and Justice. Dr. Goff has been recognized as a national leader in race and gender discrimination by legal practitioners as well, having served as an expert witness in several prominent regional and national cases. Most recently, he was recognized as the emerging leader in research on race, gender, and policing. Dr. Goff spent the 2008-2009 academic year as a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He is also the 2009 Early Career Award Recipient for APA’s Division 9 and Division 48.