Darrick Hamilton is a university professor at the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy and the founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Hamilton’s work examines the intersections of social stratification, power and political economy in order to advance scholarship, practice, and policy as they relate to promoting economic inclusion, social equity, and civic engagement.
Hamilton’s work garners wide-spread academic and media attention, and has inspired legislative proposals at the federal, state, and local levels, including baby bonds, guaranteed income, and a federal job guarantee. He’s been profiled in The New York Times, Mother Jones Magazine, Bloomberg’s Business Week, The Wall Street Journal among other periodicals. He is a member of the 2020 inaugural class of the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation’s Freedom Scholars.
In 2020, he was appointed as a member of the economic committee of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force. He has testified before several Senate and House committees, including the Joint Economic Committee and the Senate Banking Committee. Appointed by the mayor of New York City, he is currently serving as a commissioner on the NYC Racial Justice Charter Revision Commission. He is a Roosevelt Institute fellow, a Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis senior fellow, and nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro.
Hamilton was born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York.
Education:
Hamilton is a graduate of Oberlin College and earned his doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina.