A message from Dean Douglas Elmendorf
To the Harvard Kennedy School Community,
I am delighted to announce that Professor Sandra Susan Smith will be the new faculty director of HKS’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, as you can see in the attached press release.
Professor Smith serves as the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice at the Kennedy School and faculty director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management. She is also a professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. She will start her additional appointment as director of the Wiener Center on July 1.
Professor Smith’s outstanding scholarship addresses criminal justice, urban poverty and joblessness, and social capital and social networks. Recently, she has focused on the front end of criminal case processing, especially the consequences of pretrial detention. She also is leading a three-year project on racial disparities in Massachusetts’ criminal courts, in which practitioners and experts are developing more just policies and practices. In each of the areas she studies, racial inequality and its root causes are core issues of concern.
I want to offer my deep appreciation to Professor David Deming, the Kennedy School’s academic dean, for leading the Wiener Center with great energy and vision during the past three years. Professor Deming will remain very involved with the vital work of the Wiener Center.
Please join me in thanking David Deming and congratulating Sandra Susan Smith.
Best,
Doug