PRESS ADVISORY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2015
Contacts:
Kristin Caulfield, Manager of Communications, (617) 495‐4530, kcaulfield@wcfia.harvard.edu
Theodore J. Gilman, Executive Director, (617) 495‐2125, tgilman@wcfia.harvard.edu
Cambridge, MA—Weatherhead Center Director Michèle Lamont, the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and African and African American studies at Harvard University, has been elected the 108th president of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Lamont will serve as president‐elect for one year beginning in August 2015.
Lamont says of her election, "I am honored by the trust put in me and hope to make the most of this opportunity to define an intellectual agenda for our field and to bolster the influence of sociology in the public sphere.” She adds, "I plan to work on enhancing sociology's influence in education, politics, and the media in order to broaden our impact as an enlightening, empowering, democratizing, and diversifying force." More specifically, Lamont plans to reinitiate efforts to create high school Advanced Placement sociology courses and support the development of a K–12 sociology curriculum.
In addition to directing the Weatherhead Center, she is co‐director of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Previously, she chaired the Council for European Studies and was a member of the High Council on Science and Technology to the prime minister of France. Lamont earned her PhD from the Université de Paris.
Lamont is a cultural sociologist and expert in qualitative and comparative analysis whose research focuses on the study of group boundaries; cultural processes of inequality and stigmatization; excellence in higher education; social resilience and well‐being; and definitions of worth in contemporary societies. Her influential books include Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper Middle Class; The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration; and How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. A new co‐authored book, Getting Respect: Dealing with Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel, will be published by Princeton University Press in 2016.
During her distinguished career, Lamont has held a variety of leadership positions within the ASA. She currently chairs the ASA's Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section, and previously chaired the Culture Section and the Theory Section. She also served as a council member and as the chair of the Award Committee. The American Sociological Association is a nonprofit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work and advancing sociology as a science and profession.
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About the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs has over 400 affiliates including more than 200 Faculty Associates, twenty‐four Graduate Student Associates, seventeen Undergraduate Associates, and numerous postdoctoral scholars, nonacademic professionals and practitioners in international affairs, and staff. It provides substantial support for faculty and student research, seminars, conferences, and its six programs: the Canada Program, the Center for History and Economics, the Fellows Program, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Program on Transatlantic Relations, and the Program on U.S.‐Japan Relations.
The Center for International Affairs was founded by Robert Bowie and Henry Kissinger in 1958 and was renamed the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs in 1998. The Center is the largest international social science center within Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The research supported by the Center focuses on international, transnational, global, and comparative topics, and may address contemporary or historical issues, including rigorous policy analysis, as well as the study of specific countries and regions outside the United States.
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TEL: (617) 495‐4420
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