Lawrence D. Bobo, the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor at Stanford University, will give the inaugural lecture for the Center on Urban Research and Public Policy in Arts & Sciences at 4 p.m. Sept. 12 in Graham Chapel.
Bobo, director of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity and of the Program in African and African-American Studies, will present “Facing the Urban Challenge: Where Inequality, Race and Immigration Meet.”
WUSTL’s Center on Urban Research and Public Policy, established last year, is an interdisciplinary effort dedicated to promoting scholarship and debate on critical issues facing urban America. In addition to serving as a research center, it also includes undergraduate and graduate programs in urban research and policy.
The center and the new interdisciplinary major in urban studies draw faculty collaborators from various academic units in Arts & Sciences — including American Culture Studies, International and Area Studies, Social Thought and Analysis, and African and Afro-American Studies — as well as from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, the School of Law and its Interdisciplinary Institute for Children and Youth, and the School of Architecture.
The center and its programs seek to draw serious examination to the profound issues confronting urban/metropolitan America and to prepare students for the challenge of solving these problems.
The urban research and policy center’s founding director is Arts & Sciences’ Carol Camp Yeakey, Ph.D., professor of education with appointments in American Culture Studies and in International and Area Studies.
“Professor Bobo is one of the foremost urban sociologists in America,” Yeakey said. “His research has been applauded in the highest intellectual circles in the academy as he sheds light on the profound issues and challenges confronting urban America. In so doing, he analyzes as well similar problems faced by governments in cities across the globe.
“While examining urban America, his work never fails to address the broader social and public policy questions that all of America must address. His topic on the nation’s crisis dealing with immigration could not be more timely.”
Bobo’s research concerns race, ethnicity, politics and social inequality and has appeared in top journals across the social sciences disciplines.
He is founding editor for the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research and Race. He is co-author of the award-winning book Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (1997), senior editor for Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles (2000) and co-editor of Racialized Politics: The Debate on Racism in America (2000).
His most recent book is titled Prejudice in Politics: Public Opinion, Group Position and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute (2006). He is currently conducting research on the “Race, Crime and Public Opinion” project.
For more information, call 935-6730.