Lawrence D. Bobo

Lawrence D. Bobo is the dean of social science and the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He also has appointments in Harvard University’s departments of Sociology and African and African American Studies. Bobo is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected the 2017 W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and is chair-elect of Section K: Social, Economic, and Political Sciences of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Bobo’s research focuses on the intersection of social inequality, politics, and race. He has co-written, edited, and co-edited several books, including Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute (Harvard University Press, 2006). He is the founding editor of the journal Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race (Cambridge University Press, 2004-present). He is a former Guggenheim Fellow, an Alphonse M. Fletcher Sr. Fellow, a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar. Bobo has held tenured appointments in the sociology departments at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Stanford University.

Bobo earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan.