The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Martha Minow to its board of trustees. Minow is the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she has taught since 1981, and a lecturer in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is co-editor of the RSF books Just Schools (2010), Engaging Cultural Differences (2004), and a contributor to Fathers Under Fire (2001).

After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, Minow received a master’s degree in education from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. She clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Minow is an expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities. She served on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo and helped to launch Imagine Co-existence, a program of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to promote peaceful development in post-conflict societies. Her five-year partnership with the federal Department of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology worked to increase access to the curriculum for students with disabilities and resulted in both legislative initiatives and a voluntary national standard opening access to curricular materials for individuals with disabilities. She has also worked on the Divided Cities initiative which is building an alliance of global cities dealing with ethnic, religious, or political divisions.

Below is a first look at new and forthcoming books from the Foundation for Spring 2016. The list includes A Pound of Flesh, a new investigation of how monetary sanctions disproportionately punish the poor and perpetuate racial and economic inequality; Coming of Age in the Other America, a study of how neighborhoods and public policies affect the social mobility of low-income Baltimore youth; From High School to College, an analysis of how disparities across race, gender, and immigration status influence students’ paths to college completion; and Engines of Anxiety, an in-depth look at how law school rankings are reshaping legal education.

Three new issues of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences will also be released this spring, and include “Higher Education Effectiveness,” which investigates the extent to which colleges and universities today are accessible, cost-effective, and able to prepare students for the labor market; “Inequality of Economic Opportunity”, which examines the barriers to social mobility that exist in the U.S.; and “Immigrants Inside Politics/Outside Culture,” which draws from a recent survey of the Latino population to analyze the political activity of both native-born and immigrant Latinos, including the undocumented.

To request a printed copy of our Spring 2016 catalog, please contact Bruce Thongsack at bruce@rsage.org, or view the complete list of RSF books on our publications page.

Update 2/17/16: Video of the event is available in full from CSPAN.

On Friday, February 12, Sara McLanahan (Princeton University), chair of the RSF board of trustees, and Andrew Cherlin (Johns Hopkins University), co-author of the RSF book The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood, will participate in a panel discussion hosted by the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the Annie E. Casey Foundation on the changing nature of American working class families.

The panel will explore how changes to family structures and marriage dynamics at a time of rising inequality and stunted social mobility have led to the decline of low-income children’s well-being. They will also evaluate the extent to which current policies have promoted healthy outcomes for children. Other panelists include Ron Haskins (Brookings Institution), Robert Putnam (Harvard University), and Michael Gerson (The Washington Post).

The event will take place at 10:30am EST on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and is free and open to the public.