Alexes Harris, Ph.D., is the Presidential Term Professor and Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. She was appointed the Chair of the American Ethnic Studies Department in 2025. Dr. Harris’ work has spanned the criminal legal system, including juvenile, case processing outcomes, and monetary sanctions. Her research fundamentally centers on issues of inequality, poverty and race in United States’ legal systems. Her book, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as a Punishment for the Poor details the ways in which sentenced fines and fees put an undue burden on disadvantaged populations and place them under even greater supervision of the criminal legal system. The book has received widespread media coverage, including by The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Nation, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. Her research has been published in peer reviewed journals such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Ethnography, Crime and Public Policy, and Law and Society Review. Her research has extended this line of research in eight states with funding from Arnold Ventures. Her current work examines the loss of driver’s licenses as a result of unpaid fines and fees, and also understanding recent legislative impacts on sentencing decisions and outcomes.
Dr. Harris has been appointed to serve on several federal advisory boards and has also been called to testify for numerous state and federal governing bodies about inequalities in the criminal legal system and sentencing (including speaking at the White House on the issue of poverty and criminal justice). Dr. Harris was inducted into the Washington State Academy of Sciences (2017) and was the chair of the Washington State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights (2017-2024). She has been acknowledged for her teaching with the University of Washington’s highest teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award (2018).
She has also worked with UW Athletics as a member of the Advisory Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics since 2011 and has served as the Chair from 2014-2019. In 2019, Dr. Harris was appointed by President Cauce as the UW Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR). In 2021, she was appointed to serve as Special Adviser to the Provost at the University of Washington and serves as the Director of the Faculty Development Program (FDP), a mentoring and training program for incoming assistant professors.
In 2022 Professor Harris was appointed by Washington Governor Inslee to be the first Faculty Regent to sit on the University of Washington Board of Regents, she served the maximum three-year term (2022-2025). As a Regent, she chaired the Board’s Advisory Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (2023-2025), and is currently still a member this committee. Most recently, in 2025 she was appointed Chair of the UW American Ethnic Studies Department.
Alexes Harris is a local Seattleite, she graduated from Garfield High School in 1993, earned her B.A degree from the University of Washington in 1997, and received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002. She served as a researcher in a postdoc position in the sociology department at UW from 2002-2004, and has been a professor at the University of Washington since 2004, promoted to full professor in 2016.
Alexes Harris 