Chandler Davidson, Ph.D.
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Professor Emeritus
Department of Sociology, MS-28
Office: SH 268 |
Areas of Interest
- Racial and ethnic politics
- Minority voting rights
- Social inequality
Biography
Chandler Davidson, Research Professor and Tsanoff Chair of Public Affairs Emeritus, taught at Rice from 1966 to 2003 and still occasionally teaches despite his emeritus status. He was a founding member of the Department of Sociology and served as departmental chair for fourteen years between 1979 and 2003. In the latter part of his career, he had a joint appointment with the Department of Political Science. Davidson has won five university-wide teaching prizes, including Rice's top award, the George R. Brown Excellence in Teaching Prize. In addition to many articles appearing in academic journals and popular magazines, he has written or edited a number of books. In the early 1990s he and Professor Bernard Grofman of the University of California at Irvine directed a major scholarly effort to assess the impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the South. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the project involved almost thirty political scientists, historians, sociologists, and voting rights lawyers. The resulting book, "Quiet Revolution in the South" (Princeton University Press, 1994), was co-edited by Davidson and Grofman and won the Richard Fenno Prize awarded by the American Political Science Association for the best book published on legislative behavior that year. Davidson's work on voting rights has been cited several times in U.S. Supreme Court opinions. He is also continuing research on minority voting rights. In 2005-06 Davidson was asked to serve on the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act [link] as Congress prepared to consider reauthorizing the non-permanent provisions of the Act. In that capacity he was the primary drafter of the Commission's 2006 report, Protecting Minority Voters. He was also invited that year to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary regarding the Act's reauthorization. Along with three historians, he is currently writing a book on the suppression of minority voters as a result of "ballot security" programs.
Recent Publications
- Republican Ballot Security Programs: Vote Protection or Minority Vote Suppression-or Both?, in co-authorship with Tanya Dunlap, Gale Kenny, and Benjamin Wise, Center for Voting Rights and Protection, Washington, D.C. (2004).
- Protecting Minority Voters: The Voting Rights Act at Work 1982-2005, National Commission on the Voting Rights Act, Washington, D.C. ( 2006). [link]
- Highlights of Hearings of the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act 2005, National Commission on the Voting Rights Act, Washington, D.C. (2006 [link]
- "Renewing the Non-permanent Features of the Voting Rights Act," Focus Magazine, July-Aug. 2006, 1-14.
 Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990 Chandler Davidson (Editor), Bernard N. Grofman (Editor) |
 Controversies in Minority Voting: The Voting Rights Act in Perspective Bernard N. Grofman (Editor), Chandler Davidson (Editor) |
 Minority Vote Dilution Chandler Davidson (Editor) |
 Race and Class in Texas Politics Chandler Davidson |
 Biracial Politics Chandler Davidson |
 Protecting Minority Voters Chandler Davidson (Editor) |