William Julius Wilson gives a keynote address titled "Toward a Holistic Study of Urban Poverty: Why Both Social Structure and Culture Matter."
Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University and author of "The Declining Significance of Race; The Truly Disadvantaged"; and "When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor." Past President of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has received 44 honorary degrees, was named a MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987-1992, and was awarded the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States.
His keynote was part of a two-day conference, organized by Holy Cross and held March 22-23, 2012, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication "The Other America," by Michael Harrington '47. The conference convened renowned scholars and activists to revisit Harrington's ideas on poverty and to take on some of the defining issues of poverty today.
