Fredrick C. Harris is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. He is the triple award winner of the book Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism and the co-author of Countervailing Forces in African-American Civic Activism, 1973-1994, which received the 2006 W.E.B. DuBois Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and the 2007 Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association. He has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. and is a 2012 recipient of the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award at Columbia University.
In The Price of the Ticket, Fred Harris contends that Obama's success has, in reality, exacted a negative price. His victory has not only utterly transformed the forms of black politics that emerged in the 1960s and which laid the foundation for his eventual ascendance, Harris claims-it has profoundly weakened them.