Nikhil Goyal

Nikhil Goyal is an American sociologist, educator, and policymaker. He is the author of Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty, an intimate chronicle of three Puerto Rican children who grew up in the poorest neighborhood of Philadelphia during the era of welfare reform, mass incarceration, and educational inequality, based on nearly a decade of ethnographic fieldwork. Lauded as a “sweeping work of reportage,” his book was named A Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker . The Washington Post raved, “the stories of these children will change the way you think about poverty.” “Goyal is a vivid writer,” observed The New York Times, “the stories he tells about these kids’ circumstances are painful and viscerally frustrating.” Goyal has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,^[1] Washington Post, The Nation, and other publications. For his scholarship, he was elected as a fellow for the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Goyal has taught sociology at the University of Vermont, Wesleyan University, and New York University. His area of expertise has been sociology of education, poverty, incarceration, and social welfare.

During the 117th and 118th sessions of Congress, he served as senior policy advisor on education and children on the Senate Committee on the Budget and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions under Chairman Senator Bernie Sanders.

Goyal holds a BA from Goddard College and M.Phil and Ph.D from the University of Cambridge. He lives in Vermont.