Destin Jenkins

Destin Jenkins received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in modern US history in 2016. Before returning as faculty, he was the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago, and has held fellowships at Harvard University and The New School. 

Jenkins is a historian of capitalism and democracy in post-Reconstruction America. He is the author of The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (University of Chicago Press, 2021), and co-editor of Histories of Racial Capitalism (Columbia University Press, 2021). His other writings have appeared in The Nation, New York Times, Washington Post, among other venues. 

Book: The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City 

At its core, The Bonds of Inequality is a history of race, urban studies, and political economy in post-1945 America. The book charts the structural dependence of American cities on an unelected fraternity of finances, credit rating analysts, and wealthy individual and institutional investors. With San Francisco as its focal point, the book argues that the prioritization of select infrastructural projects, the rendering of some communities worthy or unworthy of debt, and the privileging of infrastructure for whites despite being paid for by all residents were critically tied to the national municipal bond market. These financial arrangements—as much or more than local political dynamics—were central in determining the distribution of resources and life chances within postwar American cities. 

The Bonds of Inequality has been well reviewed and received in the profession and beyond. It won the Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians (2022), the 2022 Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book in North American Urban History, and was a finalist for the 2022 best new book in African American History and Culture from the Association for the Study of African Life and History.