Dickinson Grad’s History Honors Project Sheds Light on Discriminatory Housing
Ben Warren '25 (center) is joined on stage at Commencement by John Patton Memorial Prize winner Pranav Mishra '25 (left) and President John E. Jones '77, P'11 (right). Photo by Dan Loh.
Ben Warren ’25 used his expertise in history and data analytics on “exceptionally strong” project
by Craig Layne
Time flew by when Ben Warren ’25 took Associate Professor of History Say Burgin’s First-Year Seminar “How the U.S. Institutionalized Racism,” a course he labeled one of his favorite learning experiences during his time at Dickinson. “I always felt that class went by too fast,” Warren says. “I was sad to leave it after the fall semester.”
Warren would build on this early classroom time by pursuing an honors project that draws on the expanse of his Dickinson experience, including two prestigious internships and his dual majors in data analytics and history. His project investigates the historical patterns of housing segregation and inequality within Carlisle, Dickinson’s hometown.
"At Dickinson, I’ve been encouraged to think broadly about difficult issues like residential segregation and racial inequality across disciplinary lines," Warren says. "That breadth, which allowed me to complete majors in both data analytics and history, created a unique perspective for me to work on this project.”
Warren's research delves into local historical records, including oral histories, census data and municipal files to uncover the roots and persistence of racial disparities in housing. Using transcripts of interviews from Black Carlisle residents compiled by Dickinson’s Community Studies Center between 1989 and 2017, Warren learned about the human impact of so-called restrictive covenants, clauses in property deeds that were commonly used to keep Black people out of Carlisle’s white neighborhoods.
Burgin, who met Warren in that First-Year Seminar, served as his faculty advisor for the honors project.
"There are a few things that make Ben’s honors project exceptionally strong. He fully put to use both of his majors for this project," Burgin says. "Ben did deep historical research, and a lot of this entailed working with large data sets, for which he drew on the kinds of methods he was trained in as a data analytics major."
His internship experiences also informed his work on his honors project. As an intern at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Warren compiled data for research on the impact of racial housing restrictions in Philadelphia from 1900 to present day.
Later, as a Wall Street Journal data reporting intern, he was part of the team that earned the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for its work on the political evolution of Elon Musk. Warren said the work included data analysis of Musk’s copious volume of messages on X, the social media platform Musk owns.
Burgin also highlights Warren's persistence in overcoming research obstacles.
"This came through not only in the diversity of sources that Ben drew on—rich qualitative data from oral histories as well as the quantitative data from sources like census tracts—but also in how Ben faced a research problem, which was the lack of census data around 1890,” Burgin explains. “Those census records were lost to a fire, so Ben drew on tax records from around the year 1890 to draw out the historical data he needed to capture about Black Carlislians and where they lived around that time."
Warren's research has been featured in Carlisle’s newspaper, The Sentinel, and serves as a significant contribution to understanding the historical context of racial inequality in the town.
The college honored Warren during Commencement by recognizing his achievements with the James Fowler Rusling Prize for excellence in scholarship. Warren plans to continue his reporting on complex data and social issues as a journalist with The Detroit News.
TAKE THE NEXT STEPS
Published June 18, 2025