Annual Boden Lecture: Neighborhood Inequality and Public Policy

Neighborhood Inequality and Public Policy: What Can Milwaukee Learn from Chicago and Boston?

Wednesday, September 16, 2015
4:30 p.m.
Ray and Kay Eckstein Hall
Parking is available on site
1 CLE credit

While neighborhood inequality has a long history in the United States, it has been especially in the spotlight lately. The sharp neighborhood divide in America today has been prominent in stories about violence and high rates of incarceration in poor African-American communities, gentrification and the loss of working-class neighborhoods, and the fact that upward economic mobility depends in no small part on where one grows up. The current manifestations of neighborhood inequality demand new thinking on public policy interventions.

Professor Robert Sampson has probed the nature of neighborhood inequality and collective efficacy for several decades. His Boden Lecture will describe both a range of findings from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and a new effort in Boston that provide potential insights for improving the quality of life in Milwaukee's neighborhoods. Please join us.

Robert J. Sampson
Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences
Harvard University

Robert J. Sampson, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University. Before taking that position in 2003, he taught at the University of Chicago for 12 years. Other current or past positions include director of the Boston Area Research Initiative (2012–present) and senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation. Sampson is internationally known for his work on crime, disorder, the life course, neighborhood effects, civic engagement, inequality, and the social structure of the city. His recent book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (University of Chicago 2012), already has been widely hailed as a landmark in urban social science.

This annual lecture remembers the late Robert F. Boden, dean of Marquette Law School from 1965 to 1984.

Questions?
Carol Dufek, Events Coordinator, 414.288.6452, carol.dufek@marquette.edu.