Robert J. Sampson - Balakrishnan Distinguished Lecture

Balakrishnan Distinguished Lecture in Population Dynamics and Inequality

Cohort Fates: How the Social Transformation of Crime and Punishment in America Defined Coming of Age in the Last Quarter-Century.

Professor Sampson’s lecture will feature a long-term study of multiple cohorts of children from Chicago who came of age during the transformation of crime and punishment in the last quarter-century. His results reveal the power of social change and the limits of theories focusing on individual traits and early-life experiences, contributing to a new understanding of cohort inequalities during the era of mass incarceration and the great American crime decline.

Robert J. Sampson is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society of Criminology, and the American Philosophical Society. He is the author of three award-winning books and numerous articles. Sampson’s last book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, is based on research from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. He is currently conducting a follow-up study covering 25 years in the lives of study participants.