Marshall Ganz
Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing and Civil Society at the Harvard Kennedy School where he teaches, researches, and writes on leadership, organization, and strategy in social movements, civic associations, and politics. He grew up in Bakersfield, California, where his father was a Rabbi and his mother, a teacher. Although he entered Harvard College in 1960, it was only in 1992, after a 28 year “leave of absence” as an organizer in the civil rights movement, farm worker movement, and electoral politics that he completed his undergraduate degree in history and government.
He was awarded an MPA by the Harvard Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his PhD in sociology in 2000. He has published in the American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, American Prospect, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review and elsewhere. His 2006 book coauthored with Theda Skocpol and Ariane Liazos, What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups in the Struggle for Racial Equality Co-Winner of the 2007 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award, Race, Gender, and Class Section of the American Sociological Association. In 2007-8 he contributed to the design and implementation of the grassroots organization of the 2008 Obama for President campaign. His 2009 book, Why David Sometimes Wins: leadership, organization and strategy in the California farm worker movement, earned the Michael J. Harrington Book Award of the American Political Science Association. In 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity by the Episcopal Divinity School. He teaches courses in the practices of organizing, public narrative, and being human. In collaboration with the Leading Change Network he advises social, civic, educational and political groups on organizing, training and leadership development in the US and around the world. His newest book, People Power Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal, was published in August. 2024 by Oxford University Press.
