Don E. and Kathleen M. Sokolik Lecture Series

About the Sokolik Lecture Series

Due to the generosity of Don. E. and Kathleen M. Sokolik, in support of students in Urban Studies, the lecture series has been renamed in their honor. Previous lectures have included noted scholars  specializing in understanding the human condition in cities across the globe.

Past speakers include Robert Williams the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health at  Harvard University School of Public Health; Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University; Mary E. Pattillo the Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University; Robert J. Sampson,  the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University; William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University; Douglas S. Massey,  the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University;  and,  Lawrence P. Bobo,  the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University and formerly Stanford University.

Past Lectures

September 2018: Dr. Paula T. Hammond

Dr. Paula T. Hammond,  Department Head, David H. Koch Professor of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered the keynote for the CGFP IMSD Symposium on September 20, 2017 at 1:00 pm in the Moore Auditorium. The event was sponsored by the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship Program, Initiative to Maximize Student Development, Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine Office of Diversity Programs, and the Center on Urban Research and Public Policy.
 

September 2017: Dr. David R. Williams

"Social Inequalities in Health and How to Effectively Address Them"

Dr. David R. Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health and Professor of African and American Studies and of Sociology, Harvard University, delivered the Chancellor's Graduate Fellowship Conference Keynote address at 11 a.m. on Thursday, October 12 in the Anheuser Busch Hall Moot Court Room.   
 

October 2016: Imani Perry

"Looking for Lorraine:  The Enduring Legacy of a Path-breaking Playwright"

Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and faculty associate in Princeton's program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexual Studies will be the 2016 Biennial Lecturer.  Her keynote address "Looking for Lorraine:  The Enduring Legacy of a Path-breaking Playwright" will explore Professor Perry's forthcoming biography of Lorraine Hansberry for Beacon Press.  In her talk, Professor Perry will explore Hansberry as a critical figure for conceptualizing race, gender, sexual orientation, and global politics. 

The event will be held on October 14, 2016, in Anheuser Busch Hall, Washington University School of Law, Moot Courtroom, Room 310 from 11 a.m.-12 noon.  The event is free and open to the public.  The Biennial Lecture is held in conjunction with the Washington University's Chancellor's Graduate Fellows and Alumni as they celebrate their 25th Anniversary. 

The event is co-sponsored by the Washington University Public Interest Law and Policy Speaker Series, African and African American Studies Program, Center for the Humanities, Center for Diversity and Inclusion and the Interdisciplinary Program in Urban Studies and the Center on Urban Research and Public Policy.


October 2014: Mary E. Pattillo

"Race and the Politics of School Choice"

On Wednesday, October 15th, 2014, Professor Mary Pattillo delivered the Biennial Lecture titled, "Race and the Politics of School Choice." The lecture was delivered at 2:00 pm in the Mallinckrodt Multi-Purpose room with a reception held immediately following the event.

Mary Pattillo is the Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. Her areas of interest include race and ethnicity, urban sociology, and qualitative methods. She is the author of two award-winning books, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class, and Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. She co-edited Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration, and has published numerous journal articles. Current research projects focus on housing and school choice policies, and a large comparative study of how housing matters for families and children funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She is a founding board member of Urban Prep Charter Academies, Inc., a network of all-boys high schools in Chicago


October 2012: Robert J. Sampson

"Inequality and the Future of the American City: Implications of the Neighborhood Effect"

Robert J. Sampson, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and Director of the Social Sciences Program at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study was the 2012 Biennial Lecturer.  Former chair of the Sociology Department at Harvard University, he is President of the American Society of Criminology.  Before joining Harvard, he taught in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago.  A recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, Professor Sampson was named a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  Similarly, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.   He has published in the areas of crime, neighborhood effects, econometrics and the social organization of cities.   Great American City:  Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, his most recent work,  details a decade of research on the city of Chicago and her neighborhoods.  The topic of his lecture was “Inequality and the Future of the American City:  Implications of the Neighborhood Effect.”  The lecture was held Tuesday, October l6, 2012 at 2:30  in the Danforth University Center, Room 276 on the Hilltop Campus of Washington University in St. Louis. 


September 2010: William Julius Wilson

William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyer University Professor at Harvard University and the Director of Harvard’s Urban Poverty Research Program, was the 2010 Biennial Lecturer. Professor Wilson is one of only l9 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member.  Joining the faculty at Harvard in July of l996, he was previously the Lucy Flower University Professor and Director of the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Urban Inequality.  Past President of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has received 42 honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates from Princeton, Columbia, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, and Dartmouth, as well as the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from l987 to l992, Professor 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, among others.  He is the author of numerous award-winning volumes, including The Declining Significance of Race; The Truly Disadvantaged; There Goes the Neighborhood:  Racial, Ethnic and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and their Meaning for America; and When Work Disappears, among many, many other books.

His lecture on urban America was delivered on Tuesday, October 19, 2010, at Washington University in St. Louis on the Danforth Campus in the afternoon.  The event was free and open to the public with a reception immediately following.


October 2008: Douglas S. Massey

The Center on Urban Research and Public Policy hosted its first Biennial Lecture Series in Fall 2008. Douglas S. Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University was the first Biennial Lecturer. Having served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Massey is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. His research focuses on international migration, race and housing, discrimination, education, urban poverty, and Latin America, especially Mexico, He is the author of Return of the L-Word: A Liberal Vision for the New Century (Princeton University Press 2005) and Strangers in a Strange Land: Humans in an Urbanizing World (Norton 2005). Professor Massey is currently president of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences and past president of the American Sociological Association and the Population Association of America. His visit to Washington University in St. Louis was October 20-21, 2008. His guest lecture was free and open to the public, with a reception immediately following.


September 2006: Lawrence D. Bobo (Inaugural Event)

“Facing the Urban Challenge: Where Inequality, Race and Immigration Meet.” 

The inaugural for the Center on Urban Research & Public Policy (CURPP) was held on September 12, 2006 at 4:00 p.m. in Graham Chapel at Washington University in St. Louis. The inaugural lecture was given by the distinguished Professor Lawrence D. Bobo, who was formerly the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor at Stanford University, now the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. The title of his talk was “Facing the Urban Challenge: Where Inequality, Race and Immigration Meet.” 

He was the director of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity and of the program in African and African American Studies. He is formerly the Tishman-Diker Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His research concerns race, ethnicity, politics and social inequality. Among his numerous honors and awards are being elected to the National Academy of Science, serving as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and as a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He has delivered the Yinger Lecture at Oberlin College, the Frazier Lecture at Yale University, and the Katz-Newcomb Lecture at the University of Michigan. His research has appeared in top journals across the social science disciplines including the American Political Science Review, the American Sociological ReviewSocial Forces, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Public Opinion Quarterly. He is a founding editor for the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race  published by Cambridge University Press. He is co-author of the award-winning book  Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (1997, Harvard University Press), senior editor for  Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles  (2000, Russell Sage Foundation), and co-editor of  Racialized Politics: The Debate on Racism in America (2000, University of Chicago Press). His forthcoming book is entitled Prejudice in Politics: Public Opinion, Group Position, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute to be published by Harvard University Press (March 2006). At the time, he was conducting research on the “Race, Crime and Public Opinion” project.

The inaugural lecture was free and open to the public, with a reception immediately following.