William Julius Wilson

Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor
Director
Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program
Office Address
Taubman-406
Mailing Address
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Mailbox 103
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Contact
Phone: 617-496-4514
Fax: 617-495-5834
Email: bill_wilson@Harvard.Edu
Assistant
Edward Walker (617-496-5612)
No Image

Profile

William Julius Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. He is one of only20 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member. After receiving the Ph.D. from Washington State University in 1966, Wilson taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 1972. In 1990 he was appointed the Lucy Flower University Professor and director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Urban Inequality. He joined the faculty at Harvard in July of 1996.

Past President of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has received 44 honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates from Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and New York University. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992, Wilson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute of Medicine, and the British Academy. In June 1996 he was selected by Time magazine as one of America's 25 Most Influential People. He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

He is the author of numerous publications, including The DecliningSignificance of Race, winner of the American Sociological Association's Sydney Spivack Award; The Truly Disadvantaged, which was selected by the editors of the New York Times Book Review as one of the 16 best books of 1987, and received The Washington Monthly Annual Book Award and the Society for the Study of Social Problems' C. Wright Mills Award; When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, which was selected as one of the notable books of 1996 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review and received the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award; and The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics. Most recently he is the co-author of There Goes the Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and Their Meaning for America and Good Kids in Bad Neighborhoods: Successful Development in Social Context.

Other honors granted to Wilson include the Seidman Award in Political Economy (the first and only noneconomist to receive the Award); the Golden Plate Achievement Award; the Distinguished Alumnus Award, Washington State University; the American Sociological Association's Dubois, Johnson, Frazier Award (for significant scholarship in the field of inter-group relations); the American Sociological Association's Award for Public Understanding of Sociology; Burton Gordon Feldman Award ("for outstanding contributions in the field of public policy") Brandeis University; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Award (granted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Los Angeles).

Professor Wilson is a member of numerous national boards and commissions, and was previously the Chair of the Board of The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Courses

Fall

  • SUP-923 Proseminar on Inequality and Social Policy III

Spring

  • SUP-207 Social Structure and Culture in the Study of Race and Urban Poverty

Media Expertise

William Julius Wilson welcomes media inquiries on the following subjects:

Additional experts may be found by clicking on each subject listed. You may contact faculty directly or if you need assistance contact the Communications Office at 617-495-1115.

Research

For a complete list of faculty citations from 2001 - present, please visit the Harvard Kennedy School Research Report Online.

Selected Publication Citations:

  • Academic Journal/Scholarly Articles
    • Wilson, William Julius. "Poverty, Politics, and a 'Circle of Promise': Holistic Education Policy in Boston and the Challenge of Institutional Entrenchment." Journal of Urban Affairs (published online, January 3, 2013).
    • Quane, James M., and William Julius Wilson. "Critical Commentary: Making the Connection Between the Socialisation and the Social Isolation of the Inner-city Poor." Urban Studies 49.14 (November 2012): 2977-2987.
    • Wilson, William Julius. "Race and Affirming Opportunity in the Barack Obama Era." Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 9.1 (June 2012): 5-16.
    • Wilson, William Julius. "A New Public Rhetoric for the Occupy Movement." Contexts 11.2 (Spring 2012): 12-21.
  • Book Chapters
    • Wilson, William Julius. "Foreword." Not Meant to Live Like This: Weathering the Storm of Our Lives in New Orleans. ATD Fourth World Movement, 2012.
    • Wilson, William Julius. "Afterword." The Truly Disadvantaged. University of Chicago Press, 2012, 251-301.
    • Wilson, William Julius. "Afterword." The Declining Significance of Race. University of Chicago Press, 2012, 183-209.
  • Commentary
    • Wilson, William Julius. "The Problems of All Americans." Boston Review, January/February 2012.
  • Magazine and Newspaper Articles
    • Wilson, William Julius. "The Role of Elite Institutions." Chronicle of Higher Education. August 2, 2012.
  • Reviews
    • Wilson, William Julius. "The Great Disparity." Reviews of The Great Divergence, by Timothy Noah, and Coming Apart, by Charles Murray. Nation, 295.5/6, July 30, 2012: 27-32.