Phillip Atiba Goff (Ph.D., Social Psychology, Stanford University; A.B., Harvard University) is Executive Director of Research for the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity and Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research
examines racial discrimination and the intersections of race and gender. He is best known for his work exploring the notion that racial prejudice is not a necessary precondition for racial discrimination. That is, Dr. Goff’s research examines how contextual factors—even absent racial hostility—can facilitate racially unjust outcomes. Dr. Goff’s research has been recognized by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Ford Foundation, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation among others. Having served as an expert witness in several prominent regional and national cases, legal scholars have also recognized Dr. Goff as a leader in contemporary theories of discrimination. Most recently, Dr. Goff has been recognized as the leader in psychological research on race, gender, and policing. His research is the first to link psychological factors to an officer’s use of force history, creating the first empirical model for predicting police disparities in stops—and racial disparities in police use of force.