Emeriti Faculty

Dr. Irwin Garfinkel is a world-leading researcher on poverty and the welfare state and a go-to resource for policymakers interested in anti-poverty programs at all levels of government.

Dr. Irwin Garfinkel is the Mitchell I. Ginsberg Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Urban Problems at the Columbia School of Social Work. 

Irwin Garfinkel conducts research on the benefits and costs of existing and proposed welfare state programs. He has examined both universal programs, including national health insurance, child allowances, an assured child support benefit, and basic income as well as means tested programs including Food Stamps, TANF and its predecessor AFDC, and the benefits and costs of means testing as compared to universality. A social worker and economist by training, Dr. Garfinkel’s book Wealth and Welfare States: Is America Laggard or Leader? (Oxford University Press, 2010) and paper “Welfare State Myths and Measurement” challenge widespread half-truths, such as that the American welfare state is small and has always been a laggard, and most important, that the welfare state undermines productivity. In all, he is the author of over 200 articles and 16 books or edited volumes on poverty, income transfers, program evaluation, single-parent families and child support, gene-environment interactions, and the welfare state.

Much of Garfinkel’s work has focused on the economic insecurity of single mothers and their children and policies designed to increase their security. From 1980-1990, he was the principal investigator of the Wisconsin Child Support Study. His research on child support influenced legislation in Wisconsin, other American states, the U.S. Congress, Great Britain, Australia, and Sweden.

His most recent research focuses on the benefits and costs of a universal child allowance.  He served on the National Academy of Science Panel that produced the 2019 report “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty.” Child allowances were the centerpiece in two of the four program combinations recommended by the committee.  

In 1998, in partnership with his wife, Sara McLanahan of Princeton University, Dr. Garfinkel initiated the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Nearly 5,000 children in 20 large American cities were enrolled in the study at birth and are now in their early 20’s. In 2012, in collaboration with Chris Wimer, Jane Waldfogel, and Julien Teitler, with funding from the Robin Hood Foundation, he initiated the New York City Longitudinal Survey of Well-being, called the Poverty Tracker.  The Poverty Tracker collects representative longitudinal data from New York City residents to track the dynamics of poverty and wellbeing in the city over time.

Dr. Garfinkel was co-founding director (2007-2014) of  the Columbia Population Research Center and also co-founding director (2014-2022) of the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy  . Previously, Dr. Garfinkel served as the director of the Institute for Research on Poverty from 1975-1980, and the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin from 1982-1984. He also served as Interim Dean of CSSW from 2017 to 9/2019.

Garfinkel holds a BA in History from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA in Social Work from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Social Work and Economics from the University of Michigan.

Edward Joseph Mullen is the Willma and Albert Musher Professor Emeritus, previously serving as CSSW Acting Dean and Associate Dean. Before joining the Columbia University faculty, he was a tenured professor at the University of Chicago and Fordham University. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work, Oxford University Press.

Dr. Mullen’s scholarly work has focused on social work practice research, mental health services research, and evidence-based policy and practice implementation, contributing to the development of rigorous methods for assessing policy and practice outcomes. Dr. Mullen has authored numerous books, book chapters, and journal articles, contributing significantly to the profession’s knowledge base. His scholarship is the subject of the festschrift: Soydan, H. (Ed.) (2015). Social work practice to the benefit of our clients: Scholarly legacy of Professor Edward Joseph Mullen. Bolzano, Italy: Bolzano University Press.

Dr. Mullen has held numerous research leadership roles, including as principal investigator for multiple National Institute of Mental Health-funded predoctoral and postdoctoral mental health services training programs at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. He has directed several prominent research centers, including the Institute of Welfare Research, Community Service Society of New York; Center for the Study of Social Work Practice, Columbia University and the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services; and the Willma and Albert Musher Program for Life Betterment through Science and Technology, Columbia University.

Dr. Mullen has been a leading contributor to international social work and social welfare research, notably as a co-founder of a European network of social work research centers that fostered collaboration and advanced research in social welfare across Europe. Dr. Mullen led the Asia Society’s Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group as Deputy Chairman of the Vietnam-Laos-Khmer Panel. He has held leadership positions with the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada. He is contributing to social research methods education in China through the Beijing-based GEC Academy.

Dr. Mullen earned his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University and holds both a B.A. and M.S.W. from the Catholic University of America. Over the course of his career, he has been honored with numerous awards and recognitions, including the Distinguished Alumni Award from the National Catholic School of Social Services at the Catholic University of America, election as a Fellow of the prestigious American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and induction into the Columbia School of Social Work Hall of Fame.

Barbara Levy Simon taught in the master’s and doctoral program at CSSW from 1986-2019. Her books include Never-married Women (1987) Temple University Press; The Empowerment Tradition in American Social Work: A History (1994) Columbia University Press; and The Columbia Guide to Social Work Writing (2012), co-edited with Warren Green – Columbia University Press. Her research focuses on the historical interplay between social movements and the profession of social work in the U.S. Three of her more recent historical publications are:

• “A Microhistory of Cross-Class Feminism in New York City,1907–1911: The Activism of Carola Woerishoffer,” (2023), Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work, 38(1), 40-54.
• “Berlin’s municipal socialism: A transatlantic muse for Mary Simkhovitch and New York City,” (2020), Chapter 3, 35-50 in The Settlement House Movement Revisited: A Transnational History, edited by John Gal & Stefan Kongeter, Policy Press.
• “Sense and sensibility: Dual  knowledge  bases   of Greenwich House, NYC,1902–1920,” Qualitative Social Work (2018), Vol. 17(6) 814–831.

Simon serves as the Book Review Editor of Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work since 2017.  

Allen Zweben, Ph.D. has been an active researcher in the addictions field for more than 40 years. His contributions to the addiction field have involved developing, adapting, and testing innovative behavioral treatments and medications for alcohol-related problems. Dr. Zweben has been principal investigator in large scale, multi-site, collaborative, NIH-funded clinical trials. He played a key role in developing and testing motivational enhancement therapy (MET), a brief intervention that employed motivational Interviewing strategies for alcohol-related problems. MET was tested and found to be a promising approach in a landmark study known as Project MATCH. Consequently, MET has been adapted and  employed in community agencies serving individuals having addiction and related problems He is co-author of a widely used textbook entitled “Treating Addiction: A Guide for Professionals” with Bill Miller and Alyssa Forcehimes.