Megan Ming Francis

Megan Ming Francis

Carr Center Fellow
Dr Francis

Dr. Megan Ming Francis is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington and previously a Visiting Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (2019-2020). Francis was the founding co-director of the Race and Capitalism Project and a former research fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute at the NAACP-LDF. Francis specializes in the study of American politics, with broad interests in criminal punishment, Black political activism, philanthropy, and the post-civil war South. She is the author of the award winning book, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. Francis is a proud alumnus of Seattle Public Schools, Rice University in Houston, and Princeton University where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics.

At the Carr Center, she will be working on her next book project ‘How to Fund a Movement’ which examines the history and future of philanthropy’s complicated relationship with social movements. Francis encourages everyone to listen to the podcast created by students in her HKS course ‘Philanthropy and Social Movements’: https://www.philanthropyandsocialmovements.com/