David Harris named director of new Institute for Social Sciences

Harris

By Susan Lang

David Harris, Cornell professor of sociology, has been appointed the first director of the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell, a new initiative that promises to strengthen the social sciences and promote interdisciplinary research and cross-department cooperation among dispersed social scientists across Cornell's campus.

After a year of planning, the Institute for the Social Sciences will be launched formally in the fall of 2005 and will be based in Noyes Lodge on campus and modeled, in part, after Cornell's renowned Society for the Humanities. Institute-affiliated faculty will conduct research around a common theme each year. The theme will be chosen through an annual competition by the director and the Social Science Advisory Council, a faculty committee that has been planning the institute for the past three years.

"Each year, the Institute for the Social Sciences will bring together about a dozen faculty, who will receive release time or research support, or both, to work on the common theme and, in all likelihood, generate new interdisciplinary courses related to the theme," said Walter Cohen, Cornell vice provost and a professor of comparative literature.

The competition for the first theme has just been announced, and details are available at the institute's Web site at <www.socialsciences.cornell.edu>. A seminar chair will be selected each May. The chair will be the intellectual leader of the chosen theme and will organize specific activities in that area, including a weekly seminar that will include a mix of Cornell-based and visiting scholars, Cohen said. The seminars will be launched in the fall. Institute research will be disseminated via book volumes, journal articles, journal special issues, courses and the mass media.

"I am extremely excited about this new Institute for the Social Sciences," said Harris. "The resources provided to us by the Provost's Office will enable us to forge exciting new connections among social scientists on campus, assist departments in recruiting and retaining top faculty and share cutting-edge research with Cornell and broader communities." Marcia Parks, executive staff assistant in the Provost's Office, will assist Harris in his role as director of the institute.

The institute is part of a three-pronged initiative to strengthen the social sciences at Cornell, said Cohen. These initiatives will have a combined budget of approximately $1.5 million a year. The other two initiatives include funding for two junior-level faculty lines in both government and economics and for aggressively recruiting distinguished social scientists to the faculty.

As the director of the institute for a three-year term, Harris will provide overall intellectual and administrative leadership. He was an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Michigan from 1996 until he joined the Cornell faculty in fall 2003. Harris' research focuses on race and ethnicity, social inequality, identity and social demography.

"His work has appeared in leading journals and collections on such topics as racial and multiracial classification and lived experience, residential issues, poverty and race and class," said Cohen. "His interest in stratification has made him a crucial addition to the Department of Sociology's Center for the Study of Social Inequality."

Harris who serves on the board of oversees of the General Social Survey, earned a B.S. in human development and social policy in 1991 and a Ph.D. in sociology in 1997, both from Northwestern University.