Today at Brown

Marion Orr has been named director of Brown’s A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions and director of the John Hazen White Public Opinion Laboratory at Brown University, effective July 1, 2008. He replaces Darrell M. West, who is leaving Brown June 30 to become vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

Orr is the Fred Lippitt Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Urban Studies, and the director of the Program in Urban Studies.

“As a noted scholar of urban politics, a proven academic leader, and a core member of the Taubman Center,” said Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra in announcing the appointment, “Professor Orr will provide strong leadership to the center.

Orr earned his Ph.D. in government and politics at the University of Maryland in 1992 and has taught at Brown since 1999. Previously he served as assistant professor of political science at Duke.

He is the author of four books, 23 journal articles, and 15 chapters in edited volumes. His co-authored book, The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education, won the American Political Science Association Urban Politics section’s best book on urban politics award. His book Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore, 1986-1998 won the Aaron Wildavsky award for best policy studies book. Orr’s most recent edited books include Power in the City: Clarence Stone and the Politics of Inequality (with V. C. Johnson) and Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change.

Orr currently is gathering data for a study of the community-organizing efforts of local affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national network of local, community-based organizations founded by the late Saul Alinsky. This will lead to a book that examines community organizations in Baltimore, Memphis, and New York City.

Orr has conducted research on various aspects of politics and urban policy pertaining to Providence and Rhode Island politics. He is co-author with Darrell M. West of a number of scholarly articles dealing with citizen views of urban revitalization, downtown malls as engines of economic development, public attitudes toward urban terrorism, citizen evaluations of local police, race, gender, and communications in natural disasters, and public assessments of the adult entertainment industry. As part of these studies, Orr and West have undertaken annual public opinion surveys of Providence, Rhode Island, and the state as a whole.

Orr has held a number of fellowships, including an appointment as research fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Presidential Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley, and a fellowship from the Ford Foundation. In 2003-04, Orr served as president of the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on Urban Politics. From 2000 to 2006, he was an elected member of the governing board of the Urban Affairs Association (UAA), an international organization devoted to the study of urban issues. In 2005–2006 he served as dhair of UAA’s governing board. Orr has also served as a member of the executive councils of the American Political Science Association and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. He has worked on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban Affairs, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Urban Affairs Review.

In Rhode Island, Orr has been on the board of directors of the Providence Plan, a member of Rhode Island’s Select Commission on Race and Police-Community Relations, and a community advisor to the Rhode Island Foundation.