Marie Gottschalk Named Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor
Marie Gottschalk, Professor of Political Science, has been appointed Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor. Gottschalk is a widely acclaimed scholar of American politics whose research is focused on public policy, especially health policy and criminal justice. She is the author of several books, including Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, which received the 2016 Michael Harrington Book Award from the American Political Science Association's New Political Science Section and the 2018 Michael J. Hindelang Book Award from the American Society of Criminology. Her book, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America, was awarded the Ellis W. Hawley Book Prize from the Organization of American Historians.
Gottschalk is the recipient of numerous other honors, including two at Penn for her teaching: the Penn Arts & Sciences Dean’s Award for Innovation in Teaching in 2009, and the School’s Ira H. Abrams Memorial Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2017. In addition to serving as President of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and as an editor of Studies in American Political Development, Gottschalk has served on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences National Task Force on Mass Incarceration and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration. She is widely quoted in the media, including the Academy Award-nominated film 13th.
The Kahn chairs were established through a bequest by Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn. Edmund Kahn was a 1925 Wharton graduate who had a highly successful career in the oil and natural gas industry. Louise Kahn, a graduate of Smith College, worked for Newsweek and owned an interior design firm. They supported many programs and projects at Penn, including Van Pelt Library, the Modern Languages College House, and other initiatives in scholarship and the humanities.
