CURRICULUM     Social Policy module

In addition to their specific disciplinary courses of study, doctoral students in both the Government and Sociology tracks embark in their second year on a dual program of study in Social Policy. The main components of the Social Policy curriculum are the three-semester Proseminar in Inequality & Social Policy, a field specialization, and the doctoral dissertation, supervised by a committee of faculty members drawn from both the traditional disciplinary department and from the Social Policy faculty of the Kennedy School of Government.

The Proseminar

The Proseminar in Inequality & Social Policy is an intensive doctoral seminar specifically designed for students in the joint Social Policy Ph.D. programs, as well as doctoral fellows from the departments of Economics, Government, Public Policy, and Sociology who participate in Harvard’s Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy. (This latter program is a National Science Foundation training program for Harvard Ph.D. students that is closely affiliated with the Social Policy Ph.D. programs. The two programs reinforce each other in fostering a vibrant community of scholars working on issues of inequality and social policy) .

	Professor Jeffrey Liebman

The Proseminar aims to introduce Ph.D. students to research on the causes and consequences of economic inequality, broadly defined, from an advanced-level multidisciplinary perspective. The first two classes in the sequence (Proseminar I and II) are generally taught by a multidisciplinary team of three to four faculty members, comprised this year of Professors Jeffrey Liebman (economist), Bruce Western (Sociologist), Kathryn Edin (sociologist), and Torben Iversen (political scientist). In recent years, David Ellwood (economist), Jennifer Hochschild (political scientist), Christopher Jencks (sociologist), Theda Skocpol (political scientist), and William Julius Wilson (sociologist) have also led the course. The course leaders share responsibility for advising students in their seminar papers throughout the year and occasionally will invite other faculty participants to lead a unit of the seminar in their area of expertise.

Illustrative of the range of issues covered, Proseminar I is currently organized to explore the causes of varying trends in wage inequality in the United States and Western Europe in recent decades and associated policy responses. Topics covered include the supply and demand for skills, labor market discrimination, immigration patterns, economic and political institutions, education issues, and wage policies. Several weeks are also devoted to changes in family structure and welfare and child support policies.

Proseminar II typically considers the political and social consequences of economic inequality. It examines the effects of political activities in creating or reducing inequality in the U.S., as well as the reciprocal effects of inequality on political activity and policy choices. Substantive issue areas explored in this portion of the course generally includes education policy, welfare, urban poverty, residential segregation, and children and families.

Professor Jane Mansbridge Photo © Martha Stewart.

The Proseminar’s third semester, a research-oriented workshop currently headed by Professor William Julius Wilson, carries forward the student research of the first-year Proseminar. Students dedicate themselves to developing their research into a professional presentation and a publishable article. They engage in discussions with leading national scholars who present their work in the weekly Malcolm Wiener Inequality & Social Policy Seminar Series, a public forum, and then continue the dialogue in the smaller Proseminar session. The students critique fellow student papers across disciplines and receive feedback on their own research presentations from their classmates and the visiting national scholars.

Students with special interest in comparative topics pertaining to Western Europe will find newly expanded opportunities and resources available to support their work. Both the Proseminar and weekly Seminar Series described above now devote new attention to social policy issues in Western Europe, and European scholars are regularly invited to Harvard to speak in the seminar series. Most novel, perhaps, the companion Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy has established a European Network on Inequality, which links 13 leading academic centers of social policy research in Europe with the Harvard program. Social Policy doctoral students enjoy opportunities to meet with visiting scholars, and those students who win fellowships from the Inequality program can receive travel funds to support a two-month research residency at one of the European affiliate sites.

Field specialization

In addition to the Proseminar sequence, all students develop a field specialization within social policy as a means of focusing their studies. Students choose from seven topical areas, which are elaborated more fully in the research domains section of the site:

Patrick Sharkey, Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy.

• Work, wages, and the marketplace
  
• Urban poverty and spatial segregation
  
• Family structure and parental roles
  
• Racial disparities, immigration, and bridging racial/ethnic divides
  
• Educational access and quality
  
• Political inequalities, participation, and social capital
  
• Institutions, policy, and comparative welfare state analysis

Students pursue research in the specialty field through the development of their qualifying paper, which will usually be produced in conjunction with the Proseminar.

The doctoral dissertation

Once Ph.D. students have completed their coursework and fulfilled the qualifying requirements in their disciplinary department, they embark upon the dissertation stage of their program. Students begin by developing and defending a dissertation prospectus, a research proposal that will form the basis of the dissertation research. Students engage in dissertation research under the supervision of a committee comprised of at least three faculty members: one from the disciplinary department of Government or Sociology, one from the Social Policy faculty in the Kennedy School, and a third member who may be from either group (or another appropriate discipline).

At the dissertation stage, Social Policy Ph.D. students also enroll in the Advanced Research in Social Policy workshop (Social Policy 301), which is currently led by Robert Sampson (sociologist). This workshop is designed to provide feedback in either the development of a dissertation prospectus or dissertation chapters in progress.

Continue on to research domains»

Additional photo credits:

Entrance to the Taubman Building, home to the Social Policy program; view of 124 Mount Auburn, which houses a portion of the Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy; and Ph.D. student Patrick Sharkey.

© 2004, 2005 Pamela Metz