Justin Gest is a Professor and the Director of the Public Policy Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He is the award-winning author of seven books on immigration, democracy, and demographic change, including Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

He has published a wide variety of peer-reviewed articles on immigration and the politics of demographic change, and is a founding editor of the Oxford University Press book series, “Oxford Studies in Migration and Citizenship.”

Over the last two decades, he has published his reporting or commentary with news publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and served as a columnist for CNN Opinion and Newsweek.

From 2010 to 2014, Professor Gest was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Harvard University’s Departments of Government and Sociology. In 2014 and 2020, Professor Gest received Harvard University’s Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize and George Mason University’s Teaching Excellence Award, respectively each university’s highest award for faculty teaching. In 2013, he received the Star Family Prize for Student Advising, Harvard’s highest award for student advising.

From 2007 to 2010, he co-founded and served as the co-director of the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

He is a product of Los Angeles Unified School District’s University High School in Los Angeles, where he grew up. He later earned his bachelor’s degree in Government at Harvard University and his PhD in Government from the LSE.