On July 1, 2025, Bruce Western will become the eleventh president of the Russell Sage Foundation, the principal foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. He succeeds former president Sheldon Danziger, who led the foundation since 2013.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Western was the Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice and Director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University. He is an internationally renowned expert on poverty and inequality who studies the connections between political institutions and social and economic inequality, with a focus on criminal justice policy and incarceration. His recent research has examined the causes, scope, and consequences of the historic growth in U.S. prison populations.
Western is a long-time participant in a wide range of Russell Sage-supported projects. He was a visiting scholar at RSF in 1999-2000 and is the author of two prize winning Russell Sage Foundation books, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison (2018) and Punishment and Inequality in America (2006). He also co-edited the RSF books Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration (with David Weiman and Mary Patillo) and The Great Recession (with David B. Grusky and Christopher Wimer). Additionally, he contributed chapters to the RSF volumes Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America; Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality; The New Institutionalism in Sociology; and Social Inequality. He was a member of the editorial board for the Foundation's journal, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, and has contributed articles to two issues of the journal. He is the recipient of multiple RSF research grants under the Foundation's Future of Work and Social, Political, and Economic Inequality programs, and was a contributor to the Foundation's special initiative on the Social and Economic Effects of the Great Recession.