Hi! I’m Charles Crabtree. I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College, director of the Fundamental Needs Lab, current co-director of the Department of Government’s Honors Program, and co-founder and past co-director of the Baltic LEAP foreign study program. Prior to this, I was a visiting assistant professor at the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Michigan.
I study intergroup relations and conflict
I’m interested how people perceive and make sense of the world—and, in particular, how they understand and interact with one another. Much of my work examines intergroup relations and conflict, with a special focus on their shared core: discrimination.
My research examines why people often treat those who differ from them poorly. I investigate this across varied populations and contexts, often focusing on understudied identity groups, to identify both the mechanisms that sustain discrimination and the interventions that might reduce it. I also develop improved methodological tools for measuring discriminatory behavior.
My interest in this topic is personal as well as scholarly. I grew up in a poor, blended, biethnic family shaped by multigenerational trauma, where I saw discrimination’s effects firsthand—especially along class and ethnic lines. Earlier research on censorship and human rights deepened my curiosity: censorship taught me about the attitudes and actions people conceal, while human rights research revealed how rights are unevenly distributed across social groups.
In previous work, I’ve documented and explained discrimination against groups defined by disability, ethnicity, gender, nativity, race, and religion. My current research centers on class-based discrimination, an enduring but neglected form of inequality. Growing up in poverty—without a stable home, in trailer parks and public housing—showed me how profoundly class and money shape opportunity. While, as the Wu-Tang Clan reminds us, “cash rules everything around us,” political science has paid surprisingly little attention to how class discrimination structures society.
Methodologically, my work relies on field and survey experiments, most often in the United States. To place these patterns in global perspective, I also conduct research in other regions, especially Eastern Europe and Japan—contexts where I’ve lived and carried out extensive fieldwork to better understand how people across societies decide who deserves fair treatment.
My research has been published or is forthcoming in over 40 journals or volumes across several fields, including the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science (2), the Journal of Politics (2), Nature Human Behavior, Political Analysis, Public Administration Review, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2, 3).
This work has been featured in numerous media outlets, including National Public Radio's All Things Considered, CBS News, The Asahi Shimbun, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Huffington Post, and Yahoo! News (2). It has also been cited by advocacy organizations, such as the ACLU, and in policy documents, including testimony from the U.S. House of Representatives and State Department reports. I’m grateful to acknowledge funding from the American Political Science Association, the Swedish Research Council, the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, and the Research Council of Norway.
Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of my work on discrimination, I’m an affiliate faculty member in several departments and programs at Dartmouth, including the Department of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Studies, the Department of Sociology, the Program in Quantitative Social Science, and the Program in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.
I used to do a lot of other things
Before entering academia, I worked across politics, research, journalism, education, design, and data science — experiences that continue to shape how I think and teach.
I’m not always at my desk
When I’m not working, I’m usually with my family, exploring new places, practicing yoga, shooting photos, cooking, or playing basketball. I’m endlessly curious about Japan and the former Soviet Union, and I find joy in visiting universities around the world to see how others approach learning and community.👇
Visited colleges and universities