Faculty & Affiliated Faculty

Photo of Carl Van Horn

Carl Van Horn, Ph.D.

Faculty & Affiliated Faculty Leadership

Director & Distinguished Professor of Public Policy

Dislocated Workers, long-term unemployment, Older Workers, Research Design, workforce policy

Carl Van Horn is Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and the founding Director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Since 2013, he has been a Visiting, Non-Resident, Scholar with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He is also Senior Advisor for Strategy and Planning in the Office of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.

Van Horn is the author or editor of 17 books and over 150 scholarly articles and reports on American public policy and the American labor market including Working Scared (Or not at All, (2014); Transforming U.S. Workforce Development Policies for the 21st Century (2015); and Investing in America’s Workforce (2018).

Van Horn has held several senior positions in government at the state and federal levels, including: Director of Policy for the State of New Jersey; Chair of the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority; Member of the Boards of NJ Transit and the Commission on Science and Technology; and, Senior Economist, Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

President Clinton appointed Van Horn to a Presidential Emergency Board to mediate labor-management disputes in the railroad industry. He is the neutral Trustee of the United Mine Workers Health Fund and a member of the New Brunswick Cultural Center Board.

Van Horn graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pittsburgh in Honors Political Science and Sociology and earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in political science/public policy from the Ohio State University.