Rajiv Sethi

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Rajiv Sethi is a professor of economics at Barnard College, Columbia University, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a coauthor, with Brendan O’Flaherty, of Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice (Harvard University Press, 2019).

While at the Radcliffe Institute in 2020–2021, Sethi is working on a project on the geography of lethal force. The use of deadly force by law enforcement officers in the United States is extremely high by international standards and involves significant racial disparities. Both the scale and the disparities vary sharply across states, cities, and law enforcement agencies. The main goal of the proposed research is to understand why such geographic variations in scale and racial disparities exist and to identify effective policy remedies.

Sethi has previously held visiting positions at Microsoft Research and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and he is currently on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review and Economics & Philosophy.

Solving Racial Disparities in Policing (Harvard Gazette, 2/23/21)