Michael R. Fisher Jr., Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the political economy of race/racism in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. He has research appointments at the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University, the National Initiative of Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University, and the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of South Africa. He is also a 2023–24 Public Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute, a 2023 Pardee RAND Faculty Leader Fellow, and a 2022–23 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project.

Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Fisher’s areas of specialization include race, public policy, and socio-economic inequality, housing and urban redevelopment, and Black religion and cultural studies. He is currently working on two book projects. The first, a monograph titled, Black Community Building: Public Housing Reform and the Promise of an Alternative Model to Mixed-Income Neighborhoods (under contract with Georgetown University Press), reorients the debate on public housing reform by arguing that mixed-income housing creation as market-driven urban policy must be abandoned given its disparate impact on Black communities living in high-poverty neighborhoods in U.S. cities. The second, Confronting Racism and White Supremacy in the U.S.: Theological Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century (under contract with Friendship Press) is an anthology that seeks to chart a path through the contested terrain of racial animosity and unrest in the U.S. drawing from the rich well of wisdom across ecumenical religious traditions.

Dr. Fisher earned his Ph.D. in Religion and African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and is a proud alumnus of Howard University. Before his career as an educator, Dr. Fisher was a public policy advocate on Capitol Hill. His policy portfolio focused on federal social welfare programs addressing poverty. He later transitioned to local politics and public policy when he became the inaugural Director of Advocacy at a nonprofit organization. There he was responsible for the development of the organization’s policy agenda and advocacy strategy for affordable housing creation and the elimination of chronic homelessness in the nation’s capital, working with other activists, agencies, D.C. residents, and elected officials in the process. Currently, he serves as a founding steering committee member of the DC Legacy Project: Barry Farm-Hillsdale, a group dedicated to uplifting the Black-led struggle for land and housing in D.C.

“The fight for racial and economic justice is best forged together.”

~ Michael R. Fisher Jr.