Later this month Russell Sage Foundation president Sheldon Danziger and former visiting scholars Jane Waldfogel and Julian Zelizer will speak at Legacies of the Great Society: War, Poverty and Voting Rights, a two-day conference hosted by the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College to be held on March 24th and 25th, 2015.

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson's wave of Great Society legislation gave historic momentum to greater economic and racial equality. Much of that progress is embedded in society today, and yet the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans is the largest since the Great Depression, racial tensions continue to polarize society, and gender equality remains a struggle. Panels of scholars, practitioners, experts and advocates will assess the impact of the Vietnam War, the effects of War on Poverty programs, and the consequences—then and now—of the Voting Rights Act.

Danziger, who co-edited the RSF book Legacies of the War on Poverty with Martha J. Bailey, will present the keynote speech titled “Fighting Racial Discrimination, Poverty and Disadvantage: From Then to Now” on Tuesday, March 24th. Former RSF visiting scholars Julian Zelizer and Jane Waldfogel, who is also co-author of the forthcoming RSF book Too Many Children Left Behind, will both participate in the panel discussion “How to Conquer Poverty and Inequality Today?” on Wednesday, March 25th.

The Russell Sage Foundation has launched several research collaborations with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Over the last year, seven projects have been co-funded with the Kellogg Foundation and nine projects have been co-funded with the MacArthur Foundation.

RSF president Sheldon Danziger remarked, “I am extremely pleased that the Russell Sage Foundation has been able to collaborate with the Kellogg Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.” He added, “We receive many high-quality social science research proposals and these partnerships allow us to fund a greater number of projects than we could support with our own funds.”

This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.

During his time in residence at RSF, Visiting Scholar Philip J. Cook (Duke University) is completing a series of articles based on research in four cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston) that examines the sources of guns to gang members. He argues that a better understanding of the social networks and other underground sources of guns will inform strategic interventions to disrupt supply and reduce gun violence.

In a new interview with the Foundation, Cook discussed the social costs of gun violence, and offered strategies for law enforcement to disrupt the tightly knit networks that supply guns to gangs.

Q. What are the social costs of gun violence and how are they unequally distributed across the population?