 She was a professor of political science and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where her research and teaching fields included American political development, urban politics and policy, political sociology, and comparative studies of the welfare state.She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she had served previously as a senior fellow in governmental studies, from 1992 to 1997.From 1985 to 1992, she was a faculty member at Harvard University in the Department of Government.