Raphael J. Sonenshein is the Executive Director of the Pat Brown Institute for Political Science and Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Cal State LA. He is the author of three books on Los Angeles politics and government, and is a nationally recognized expert on California and Los Angeles politics and government, and on urban and racial politics. His first book Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles (Princeton U Press, 1993) won a book award from the American Political Science Association.
Dr. Sonenshein served as Executive Director of the Los Angeles (Appointed) Charter Reform Commission that fostered the city’s first comprehensive charter reform in 75 years, a story told in his book The City at Stake: Secession, Reform, and the Battle for Los Angeles (Princeton U Press, 2004). The new charter created an innovative system of neighborhood councils and in 2007, he was appointed as Executive Director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Review Commission. He has guided successful charter reform commissions in a half dozen cities. Dr. Sonenshein has won numerous teaching and research awards, and was the fall 2008 Fulbright Tocqueville Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the University of Paris VIII. He received his B.A. in public policy from Princeton, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale.