Lawrence R. Jacobs

Co-Chair of the Academy's 23rd Annual Conference

Lawrence R. Jacobs co-chaired the National Academy of Social Insurance’s January 2011 conference,  Meeting Today’s Challenges in Social Security, Health Reform, and Unemployment Insurance.  Professor Jacobs is well versed in presidential and legislative politics, elections and voting behavior, public opinion and polling, Social Security and health care policy.

“Larry is a wonderful scholar and a terrific colleague. Co-authoring several publications with him has allowed me to see what an endlessly creative mind he has and how astutely he is able to clarify the complicated dimensions of social insurance policy.  I recognized his touch in the January conference design and enjoyed the panels immensely,” said Academy member Fay Lomax Cook of Northwestern University.

Professor Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. He is also Professor in the Department of Political Science.  His most recent books are Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, with Theda Skocpol in 2010;Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality, with Benjamin I. Page in 2009, Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America with Fay Lomax Cook and Michael X. Delli Carpini in 2009; and The Private Abuse of the Public Interest: Market Myths and Policy Muddles, with Larry Brown in 2008.   Professor Jacobs has appeared on or been published by media outlets such as BBC, CNN, CSPAN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Professor Jacobs has received numerous awards including a 1993 Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, the 2001 Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics, the Neustadt Book Prize from the American Political Science Association, and the Distinguished Book Prize in political sociology from the American Sociological Association.  He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and his B.A from Oberlin College.

A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1996, Professor Jacobs has been an active member.  He has spoken at Academy conferences and collaborated with the Academy on the policy brief Americans’ Attitudes towards Social Security: Popular Claims Meet Hard Data in 2001; a seminar on The Private Abuse of the Public Interest: Market Myths and Policy Muddles, with Larry Brown in 2008; and hosted an Academy Medicare policy seminar at the Humphrey Institute in 2006.

Professor Jacobs lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife Julie Schumacher, an award-winning novelist and professor of creative writing.   They have two daughters in college.  When not writing and lecturing about policy and politics, Jacobs likes to listen to folk music from new singer-songwriters.

Lawrence R. Jacobs co-chaired the National Academy of Social Insurance’s January 2011 conference,  Meeting Today’s Challenges in Social Security, Health Reform, and Unemployment Insurance.  Professor Jacobs is well versed in presidential and legislative politics, elections and voting behavior, public opinion and polling, Social Security and health care policy.

“Larry is a wonderful scholar and a terrific colleague. Co-authoring several publications with him has allowed me to see what an endlessly creative mind he has and how astutely he is able to clarify the complicated dimensions of social insurance policy.  I recognized his touch in the January conference design and enjoyed the panels immensely,” said Academy member Fay Lomax Cook of Northwestern University.

Professor Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. He is also Professor in the Department of Political Science.  His most recent books are Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, with Theda Skocpol in 2010;Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality, with Benjamin I. Page in 2009, Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America with Fay Lomax Cook and Michael X. Delli Carpini in 2009; and The Private Abuse of the Public Interest: Market Myths and Policy Muddles, with Larry Brown in 2008.   Professor Jacobs has appeared on or been published by media outlets such as BBC, CNN, CSPAN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Professor Jacobs has received numerous awards including a 1993 Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, the 2001 Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics, the Neustadt Book Prize from the American Political Science Association, and the Distinguished Book Prize in political sociology from the American Sociological Association.  He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and his B.A from Oberlin College.

A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1996, Professor Jacobs has been an active member.  He has spoken at Academy conferences and collaborated with the Academy on the policy brief Americans’ Attitudes towards Social Security: Popular Claims Meet Hard Data in 2001; a seminar on The Private Abuse of the Public Interest: Market Myths and Policy Muddles, with Larry Brown in 2008; and hosted an Academy Medicare policy seminar at the Humphrey Institute in 2006.

Professor Jacobs lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife Julie Schumacher, an award-winning novelist and professor of creative writing.   They have two daughters in college.  When not writing and lecturing about policy and politics, Jacobs likes to listen to folk music from new singer-songwriters.

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