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Chika Okafor looks reflectively into the distance in front of one of the buildings at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Chika O. Okafor

2023-24 Radcliffe Fellow, Harvard Radcliffe Institute
PhD, Harvard Economics | JD, Yale | BA, Stanford

Academic CV (PDF)

Bio

Professor Chika O. Okafor will join the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law faculty in the 2025-2026 academic year. He will have dual courtesy faculty appointments in the Economics Department of the Northwestern Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Management & Organizations Department in the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management—and will serve as a Faculty Fellow at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research.

Okafor is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and was a 2023-2024 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. As an economist and a lawyer, he uses the tools of economics, law, and public policy to explore foundational matters of justice—with recent research spanning economic inequality, criminal justice, and climate change. Methodologically, his scholarship integrates economic theory, empirical techniques, and legal analysis to uncover mechanisms of—as well as inform solutions to—major economic and social problems facing contemporary American society. 

A former consultant with McKinsey & Company, Okafor is also a former attorney in the London office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. As a public policy practitioner, he has led elements of local gun violence prevention efforts with the Chicago Public Schools, supported national economic and environmental policy with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and promoted international human rights with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide.

Okafor earned his PhD in economics from Harvard University, his JD from Yale Law School, and his BA from Stanford University.  His academic CV can be found here: link to CV.

In the News

A white boy and a Black boy are at a rally and are standing next to a large placard that has colorful text reading "I Have a Dream".

OpEd published in the Boston Globe

Chika Okafor writes that although one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most powerful lines may seem passive or even naive in troubled times, it is a call to action. “The arc of the moral universe does not passively bend; it is actively bent. We bend it.”

Chika Okafor reflectively looks down and to the right in front of a bookcase while heavy shadows creatively obscure him.

Recognized by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for research

Chika Okafor’s research merges economics with educational psychology to understand how the methods we use to communicate about important issues like climate change influence public action.

Chika Okafor reflectively looks up and to the left next to the Charles River in Harvard Square with a footbridge in the background.

Recognized in the Harvard Gazette for research

Chika Okafor’s research provides evidence that district attorneys during the era of rising incarceration pushed harder for convictions and sentences in election years, on average.