Lecturers at the Jefferson Educational Society

Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance Studies and holds the Douglas Dillon Chair. He is founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings and Editor-in-Chief of TechTank. His current research focuses on educational technology, health information technology, and mobile technology. Prior to coming to Brookings, West was the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University.

West is the author or co-author of 20 books including Going Mobile: How Wireless Technology is Reshaping Our Lives (Brookings Institution Press, 2015), Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust (Brookings Institution Press, 2014), Digital Schools: How Technology Can Transform Education (Brookings, 2012), The Next Wave: Using Digital Technology to Further Social and Political Innovation (Brookings, 2011), Brain Gain: Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy(Brookings, 2010), Digital Medicine: Health Care in the Internet Era (Brookings, 2009), Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance, (Princeton University Press, 2005),Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2005),Cross Talk: Citizens, Candidates, and the Media in a Presidential Campaign (University of Chicago Press, 1996) The Sound of Money: How Political Interests Get What They Want (W. W. Norton, 1998), Biotechnology Policy Across National Boundaries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and Patrick Kennedy: The Rise to Power (Prentice-Hall, 2000), among others. 

He is the winner of the American Political Science Association’s Don K. Price award for best book on technology (for Digital Government) and the American Political Science Association’s Doris Graber award for best book on political communications (for Cross Talk). He has published more than three dozen scholarly articles in a wide range of academic journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Administration Review, Political Science Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, the British Journal of Political Science, New England Journal of Medicine, and Urban Affairs Review. In 2014, he was honored by Public Administration Review for having written one of the 75 most influential articles since 1940. This was for his article “E-Government and the Transformation of Service Delivery and Citizen Attitudes.”

He has served as a visiting scholar at Nuffield College of Oxford University and delivered nearly 150 lectures in a dozen different countries around the world, including China, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Bahrain, and the United States. He has been quoted in leading newspapers, radio stations, and national television networks around the world. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, the Gates Foundation, Kauffman Foundation, Ford Foundation, and McCormick Foundation.

The Center that he directs at Brookings examines a wide range of topics related to technology innovation including governance, democracy, and public sector innovation; policy architecture, legal and Constitutional aspects of technology; digital media and social networking; health information technology; virtual education, and green technology. Its mission is to identify key developments in technology innovation, undertake cutting-edge research, disseminate best practices broadly, inform policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels about actions needed to improve innovation, and enhance the public’s and media’s understanding of the importance of technology innovation.