Christopher Jencks

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Christopher Sandys Jencks (b October 22, 1936, Baltimore, Maryland) is an American social scientist.

Career

Jencks is currently the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1954 and was president of the school's newspaper, the Exonian, as a senior.[1] After Exeter, he received an A.B. in English literature from Harvard in 1958, followed by a M.Ed. in Harvard Graduate School of Education. During the year 1960-1961 he studied sociology at the London School of Economics. He has previously held positions at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

His interests are in the study of education, social stratification, social mobility, poverty and the poor. His recent research concerns changes in family structure over the past generation, the costs and benefits of economic inequality, the extent to which economic advantages are inherited and the effects of welfare reform. Prior to his university career, he was an editor at The New Republic from 1961 to 1967 and a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC from 1963 to 1967. He is currently an editor of the American Prospect.

Prizes, awards and honors

  • American Council on Education, co-recipient, Borden Prize for Best Book on Higher Education, 1968
  • American Sociological Association, co-recipient, Best Book in Sociology, 1974
  • Association of American Publishers, Best Book in Sociology and Anthropology, 1994
  • Harry Chapin Media Award, 1995
  • Frank Knox Fellowship, 1960–61
  • Guggenheim Fellowship, 1968 and 1982
  • Member, Institute for Advanced Study, 1985–86
  • Visiting scholar, Russell Sage Foundation, 1991–92
  • Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, 1997–98 and 2001–02

Selected bibliography

  • The Academic Revolution (with David Riesman, 1968, reissued 2001)
  • Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effects of Family and Schooling in America (with seven co-authors, 1972)
  • Who Gets Ahead? (with eleven co-authors, 1979)
  • The Urban Underclass (with Paul Peterson, 1991)
  • Rethinking Social Policy (1992)
  • The Homeless (1994)
  • The Black-White Test Score Gap (with Meredith Phillips, 1998)

References

  1. ↑ http://www.thecrimson.harvard.edu/article/1957/11/9/the-exeter-man-rebel-without-a/
  • Postman, Neil; Weingartner, Charles (1973), The School Book, Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence 

Sources

Authority control
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