The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to welcome William Julius Wilson (Harvard University) as a 2017 Margaret Olivia Sage Scholar. Wilson is one of the foremost scholars on racial and socioeconomic inequality in the U.S. He served on the board of the Russell Sage Foundation from 1988–1998, and as chair from 1993–1996. He will work in residence at the foundation as a MOS Scholar for the months of May and June.

Wilson is currently the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education and the Institute of Medicine. He has served as president of the American Sociological Association, and was a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellow. His books include Power, Racism and Privilege (1973), The Declining Significance of Race (1978), The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), When Work Disappears (1996), The Bridge over the Racial Divide (1999), and More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (2009).

Margaret Olivia Sage Scholars are distinguished social scientists selected by RSF’s Board of Trustees on the basis of their outstanding career accomplishments to the foundation’s priority program areas. Read more about MOS Scholars.