Editorial Writer and Research Director, Los Angeles Times Molly Selvin

Molly Selvin is Editorial Writer and Research Director for the Los Angeles Times. As the first-ever research director for the Los Angeles Times editorial page, she develops the newspaper’s policy position on a wide range of issues including civil and criminal justice, city and county politics, air and water quality and natural resource management policy; local government finance and development; and reproductive health.

Dr. Selvin was a Fulbright Fellow at Ludwig Maximillians University in Munich, Germany. As part of the Political Science Institute, she taught “the Politics of Urban America” and “The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1990s.” As Historian/Policy Analyst for the Rand Corporation, she directed research in the areas of civil justice, education, and energy policy. Most of her research was with Rand’s Institute for Civil Justice, which conducts independent empirical policy research on the American civil justice system.

As a free-lance writer, she continues to write for the Los Angeles Times, national Public Radio, Die Zeit (Germany), California Lawyer, San Diego Union, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Daily Journal, Jewish Journal, Sacramento Bee, and Medical Dimensions Magazine.

Dr. Selvin was also a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, a news writer and reporter for KFMB Radio (ABC Network) in San Diego, a morning news editor for KGB AM-FM Radio in San Diego, and a Metro Reporter for the San Diego Union.

Dr. Selvin received her Ph.D. in American History, M.A. in American History, and B.A. from the University of California, San Diego.