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Email: bmckenzie at domain gvpt•umd•edu

Professor McKenzie received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan. He studies American politics, African-American politics, political participation, public opinion, voting behavior, and religion and politics. From 2002-2003 he was a Fellow at the University of Rochester's Center for the Study of African-American Politics.

Dr. McKenzie's current research focuses on three areas: black civic and political involvement in the post-civil rights era; models of political judgment and opinion formation for minority groups; and the influence of religion on American political life.  He is co-author (with Fredrick C. Harris and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman) of Countervailing Forces in African-American Civic Activism, 1973-1994 (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which was awarded the 2007 American Political Science Association’s Ralph J. Bunche Book Award and the 2006 W. E. B. DuBois Outstanding Book Award by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. The first-ever study assessing trends in black civic participation after the civil rights movement, the book demonstrates that changes in activism are explained by two sets of countervailing forces: black political power and economic conditions in black communities.

Professor Mc Kenzie’s articles have appeared in leading scholarly journals including the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Political Behavior, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Review of Faith and International Affairs, and African-American Research Perspectives.