Edwin Y. Grimsley

Dr. Edwin Grimsley is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He works full-time as an Assistant Professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, City University of New York, where he teaches courses on public policy. Dr. Grimsley’s research broadly focuses on the intersection of criminal legal system involvement, poverty, and racism. He emphasizes advanced quantitative techniques, including causal inference, hierarchical regression, machine learning, and spatial analysis, which he applies rigorously in his work. Dr. Grimsley completed his dissertation in 2023, during which he deciphered how public and private legal exceptions in the development of marijuana possession laws created and reproduced existing inequalities. He has been a consultant for several nonprofits, including  the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), and the Innocence Project. Before his training as a sociologist, he worked at the Innocence Project as a Senior Case Analyst, where he investigated cases of prisoners convicted of serious crimes they did not commit, ultimately helping to free seven innocent people from prison. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center.