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Karyn Lacy
Emory University
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Karyn Lacy, assistant professor of sociology at Emory University, will write a book that examines the formation of class-based identity among participants in an elite African American mothers' organization and the cultural consequences for their children. Many of these organizations were originally created to counteract the effects of segregation and to surround children with appropriate role models.
David D. Laitin
Stanford University
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
David D. Laitin, professor of political science at Stanford University, will pursue two projects: a book on the causes of civil war, and a study of integration and trust among Russian-speaking immigrants. Laitin has completed a statistical and formal analysis of the causes of civil war, and while at the Foundation he will mine this data to develop a more complete picture of what led to war in 20 randomly selected countries. Laitin will also work on an ethnography exploring issues of trust in Russian immigrant communities in the Baltics, Brooklyn, and Israel.
Susan J. Lambert
University of Chicago
Visiting Scholar
2016 to 2017
Lambert will write a book that examines how employer scheduling practices create social and economic inequality and considers strategies for improving schedule stability and predictability in hourly jobs. She will investigate what drives precarious scheduling practices, how they vary across occupations and industries, which employees are most affected by them, and how these practices contribute to inequality in the workplace.
Michèle Lamont
Harvard University
Visiting Scholar
2019 to 2020
Lamont will work on a book that explores how Americans conceive of their self-worth in the context of growing economic inequality. Drawing from interviews with individuals from across the class spectrum, she will explore whether Americans increasingly understand their own “worthiness” through their socioeconomic success, self-reliance, and competitiveness, and analyze implications for the hardening of class and ethno-racial boundaries. She will propose ways to foster greater social inclusion by promoting more hopeful narratives and meaningful engagement of stigmatized groups.
Michèle Lamont
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
1996 to 1997
Michele Lamont, associate professor of sociology at Princeton University, worked on a book that will examine the class, racial, and cultural differences among low-status white-collar and blue-collar workers residing in the suburbs of New York and Paris. She completed the analysis of 150 interviews, on which the work is based, and wrote two RSF working papers, "The Rhetoric of Racism and Anti-Racism in France and the United States" and "Above People Above: Status and Worth among White and Black Workers."
Louise Lamphere
University of New Mexico
Visiting Scholar
2001 to 2002
Louise Lamphere, the University Regents Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, will complete an extensive ethnography of the way managed care organizations (MCOs) have affected the delivery of health care to low-income Medicaid families from different cultural and ethnic groups. Lamphere will not only organize and present collaborative material garnered from the study but will contribute her own research on clerical and semi-professional staff working for health care providers in New Mexico.
John Lapinski
Yale University
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University, John Lapinski, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, and Rose Razaghian, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, form a working group that will examine the entire history of Congressional roll call votes to study how the type of policy at stake in legislative debate determines political relationships and outcomes.
Annette Lareau
University of Pennsylvania
Visiting Scholar
2012 to 2013
Lareau will explore how parents of young children choose where to live and where to send their children to school. She argues that school selection is not a matter of individual parents making a decision in isolation but instead a socially-shaped dynamic through which parents seek to transmit advantages to their school-aged children. She will draw on interviews with parents in three suburban neighborhoods to analyze school-choice decisions.
Edward J. Lawler
Cornell University
Visiting Scholar
2007 to 2008
Edward J. Lawler, Martin P. Catherwood Professor, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, will write a book on the role of emotion in forming group attachments. He will examine how emotional processes among individuals in a group generate positive or negative sentiments about the group itself – whether among immediate local groups of neighbors or coworkers or among larger social entities such as a multi-national corporations or nations.
Catherine Lee
Rutgers University
Visiting Scholar
2009 to 2010
Catherine Lee, assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University, will write a book that examines how and why family and family reunification have been central to the regulation of immigration throughout U.S. history. Lee will trace the development of immigration policies from 1865 on, analyzing the ways in which constructs of the family and nation have shaped policymaking and continue to influence current efforts at reform.
Jennifer Lee
University of California, Irvine
Visiting Scholar
2011 to 2012
Lee will write a book comparing the different mobility pathways of the adult children of Mexican, Chinese, and Vietnamese immigrants in Los Angeles. Departing from earlier studies, she will rely on the subjects’ assessments of success rather than normative definitions. Lee will bridge the immigration and culture literatures to illustrate how ethnicity can operate as a resource for the children of immigrants, particularly for those whose parents arrive with few skills and little education.
Richard O. Lempert
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar
1998 to 1999
Richard O. Lempert, professor of Law and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will complete a study of Honolulu's public housing eviction process between 1958 and 1987. The policies governing the Hawaii Housing Authority's eviction board have undergone numerous changes, and a once minimal eviction rate has grown to nearly 100% in non-payment of rent cases.
Henry M. Levin
Stanford University
Visiting Scholar
1996 to 1997
Henry M. Levin, professor of higher education and economics, Stanford University, worked on his Accelerated Schools Project, an effort to improve the educational performance of at risk-students by enriching and accelerating their education rather than by following the existing strategy of remediation. The project began ten years ago in two pilot schools in the Bay Area and now involves some 1,000 schools in forty states. Levin also worked on papers dealing with educational vouchers, school change, and economic analyses of education standards.
Shana Levin
Claremont McKenna College
Visiting Scholar
2001 to 2002
Jim Sidanius, professor of psychology and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, Shana Levin, assistant professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College, and Colette van Laar, professor of psychology and education at Leiden University, the Netherlands, will study the impact of the multicultural undergraduate experience on ethnic tolerance and on tensions between different racial and ethnic groups.
Frank Levy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting Scholar
2000 to 2001
Frank Levy, professor of urban economics at MIT, will co-author a book with Richard Murnane that will attempt to forecast the impact of computerization on jobs and earnings inequality in the near future. Rather than simply assuming that computers will replace the less-educated, the authors will map out those areas of work that are susceptible to computerization and those jobs that will require human skills for the foreseeable future.
Helen Levy
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar
2016 to 2017
Levy will evalaute the economic consequences of health care reform by comparing outcomes in states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act with outcomes in those that did not. She will analyze the impact of Medicaid expansions on food insecurity and participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (formerly food stamps) among low-income individuals. She will also investigate changes in employment trends in the health care sector and analyze the demographic characteristics of health care workers potentially affected by Medicaid expansions.
Zai Liang
State University of New York, Albany
Visiting Scholar
2014 to 2015
Liang will write a book on patterns of employment and settlement among recent low-skill Chinese immigrants in the U.S. The book will examine the role of employment agencies in the process of immigrant settlement in non-gateway destinations, as well as the challenges of securing jobs and operating businesses for immigrants in these locations.
Daniel T. Lichter
Ohio State University
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Daniel T. Lichter, professor of sociology at Ohio State University and associate of the Center for Human Resource Research, will examine the long-term consequences of increased childhood poverty and family instability in the 1980s and 1990s. Do "at risk" children necessarily become socially disadvantaged and disengaged adults? How great are the effects of poverty on children, and does any damage done persist into adulthood?
Robert C. Lieberman
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
1998 to 1999
Robert C. Lieberman, assistant professor of political science and public affairs at Columbia University, will compare the politics of racial conflict in the United States, Great Britain, and France. Lieberman will show how the development of national political institutions shaped the role of race in questions of political representation, economic opportunity, and social integration.
Mark Lilla
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2016 to 2017
Lilla will work on a book, Ignorance and Bliss: On the Rationality of Not Knowing, which explores why people often choose not to know. The book will examine the relationship between ignorance and happiness and bridge the humanities (philosophy, religion, and literature) and the social sciences (cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, cultural anthropology) in order to investigate the consequences for individuals and societies of choosing ignorance over knowledge.