Rachel Lienesch
Affiliation Years
2022-2023
Department:
Political Science
Dissertation Title
Racial Politics of the White Left (Working Title)

Rachel is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science. Her work examines the effect of social identity on politics, with a focus on how racial identity threats shape perceptions about race and racial messaging. Her dissertation explores how White Democrats navigate a political and social landscape that increasingly puts their racial attitudes and their racial identity in conflict. Using original surveys and survey experiments, she shows that despite White Democrats developing more racially liberal attitudes, they still display backlash to messages that threaten their racial identity and racial in-group. In particular, White Democrats show resistance to messages that are critical of Whites or that promote policies meant to benefit other racial groups.

During her time at Stanford, she has also been active in service. She has served as a mentor to new graduate students and as co-president of the Political Science Graduate Student Association, where she helped design and administer the department’s first ever climate and inclusion survey. Prior to coming to graduate school, she worked for several years at PRRI, a nonprofit polling firm focused on important social and political issues in the U.S. She graduated with honors from The College of William and Mary with a B.A. in Government and a minor in Sociology.


Rachel’s dissertation explores how White Democrats navigate a political and social landscape that increasingly puts their racial attitudes and their racial identity in conflict. She uses original surveys and survey experiments to show that despite White Democrats developing more racially liberal attitudes, they are extremely resistant to messages that threaten their racial identity and racial in-group. This includes messages that are critical of Whites or that promote policies meant to benefit other racial groups.