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Leading sociologist to lecture on welfare reform at IU Bloomington Oct. 10
Sept. 28, 2000
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- William Julius Wilson, director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, will present the Charles F. Bonser Distinguished Lecture in Public Policy at Indiana University Oct. 10. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Wilson's lecture, which will begin at 4 p.m. in Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union, will focus on "Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform in the New Economy."
The Bonser Distinguished Lectures in Public Policy are sponsored by the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Kelley School of Business. The lecture series honors the founding dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser university professor at Harvard, is past president of the American Sociological Association and was selected as one of America's 25 Most Influential People by Time magazine four years ago. He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and the author of The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics.
He is one of only 17 of Harvard's professors who currently hold a university professorship, Harvard's highest professorial distinction. He has received 32 honorary degrees from such institutions as Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and Dartmouth.
Wilson joined the Harvard faculty in July 1996. He is a member of numerous national boards and commissions, including the President's Commission on White House Fellowships, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Century Foundation.
The Bonser Lectures are intended to inform the IU community about public affairs issues and to continue the university's involvement in important and current discussions nationally and internationally.
Bonser, IU associate business dean from 1969 to 1972, was asked by then-IU President John Ryan in 1971 to explore plans for a new School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He was appointed the school's first dean in 1972.
During Bonser's 17-year tenure as SPEA dean, the school developed into one of the largest and most highly rated public affairs schools in the nation. The school currently has about 200 faculty and staff and about 3,000 students on five IU campuses.
Bonser's association with IU goes back to the early 1960s, when he earned a master of business administration degree at IU, joined the business faculty, and then completed a doctorate in business. Upon his retirement from SPEA's deanship, then-IU President Thomas Ehrlich presented him with a presidential citation. Bonser retired from active service at IU in 1997.
(George Vlahakis, 812-855-0846, gvlahaki@indiana.edu)