Wilson to present Ryerson Lecture: 'Race and the New Urba

This year's Ryerson Lecture will be presented by William Julius Wilson, the Lucy Flower University Professor in Sociology and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies. Wilson, who is Director of the Harris School's Center for the Study of Urban Inequality, will present "Crisis and Challenge: Race and the New Urban Poverty," at 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 8, in Mandel Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Wilson and his colleagues are studying the conditions that have led to the growth and spread of concentrated poverty, joblessness and related problems in the inner city. Policy recommendations based on this work have provided the basis for the Chicago Urban Partnership Program, which is conducting an ongoing series of symposia with Mayor Daley and other city leaders to find solutions to pressing urban problems.

Wilson, who has been a faculty member since 1972, is the author of "The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy," published by the University of Chicago Press in 1987, as well as other books on race and urban poverty.

The Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture was established in 1972 by the Board of Trustees to give distinguished members of the faculty an opportunity to speak to the University community about their life and work. The Ryerson Lecturer is nominated by a faculty committee appointed by the president.