CENTER FOR CONSUMER FINANCIAL SERVICES
Dr. Robert D. Manning, PhD.
Robert D. Manning, PhD is Research Professor and Director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services, and past Caroline Werner Gannett Chair of the Humanities, Rochester Institute of Technology. Author of the widely acclaimed Credit Card Nation: America’s Dangerous Addiction to Credit (2000), which received the 2001 Robert Ezra Park Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sociological Practice, Dr. Manning is a specialist in the deregulation of retail banking, consumer finance, comparative economic development, immigration, and globalization. His path breaking study, "Credit Cards on Campus," was published by Consumer Federation of America in 1999 and received the 2000 Morris Rosenberg Research Award for distinguished scholarship from the District of Columbia Sociology Society.
More recently, Dr. Manning's contributions to the "Banking on Misery" special issue of Southern Exposure Magazine received the prestigious 2004 George K. Polk Award for investigative journalism and the 2004 Harry Chapin Award for Poverty Research. It has led to numerous federal and state legislative initiatives including the College Student Credit Card Protection Act which received bipartisan support in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. It was also featured as CBS Eye on America and Sixty Minutes II programs in spring 2001. In 2007, he was honored as the 12th Frank J. Battisti Memorial Lecturer by the Case Western Reserve School of Law for his outstanding contribution to public policy and the law. A documentary based on his research, In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts at www.indebtwetrust.com, was released in March 2007. Dr. Manning’s popular website includes research, public policy analyses, and educational programs at www.creditcardnation.com.
Dr. Manning’s most recent study, LIVING WITH DEBT, was published by LendingTree.com in October 2005 and is available at www.LendingTree.com/livingwithdebt. It will be published as Borrowing The American Dream in 2008. His next book on personal finance, Give Yourself Credit!, is a practical guide for the most effective use of consumer credit and will be published in winter 2008. A past Senior Fulbright Lecturer to Mexico and specialist in immigration and “free trade” economic development policies, the Cary Press will publish his Globalization and Democracy: American Leadership or Autocracy in the New World Order? in Summer 2006. Dr. Manning's current book project, Credit Card World, examines the economic, political, and cultural impacts of the global expansion of consumer credit and debt.
Dr. Manning's research has been widely reported in the U.S. and international media including Sixty Minutes II, ABC World News, ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings, ABC's Good Morning America (Diane Sawyer), Bloomberg Financial News, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, CNBC, CNN Headline News, CNN Morning News, CNN Evening News (Lou Dobbs), CNN Burden of Proof, C-SPAN, FOX Evening News, O'Reilly Factor, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, MSNBC with Brian Williams, Jim Lehrer News Hour (PBS), National Public Radio (All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition), Voice of America, Jim Bohannon Show, Australian Public Radio, British Broadcast Corporation, Canadian Public Radio, Reuters International, and Swedish Public Radio.
Dr. Manning received his PhD from the Program in Comparative International Development of The Johns Hopkins University in 1989, a MA in U.S. Economic History from Northern Illinois University in 1981, and is a 1979 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Duke University. A specialist in labor migration from Mexico and the Caribbean, Dr. Manning is a past Senior Fulbright Lecturer to the Universidad Autonoma de Oaxaca and Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan. He has conducted field work in Florida, Cuba, Haiti, and Mexico. Dr. Manning has testified before the U.S. Immigration Reform Commission, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and several state legislative bodies in regard to immigration policy and the socio-cultural adaptation of Latino immigrants and US racial inequality.