Christopher Jencks

Christopher Sandy Jencks (born October 22, 1936) is an American social scientist.

Career
Jencks is Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Emeritus. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1954 and was president of the school's newspaper, the Exonian, as a senior. After Exeter, he received an A.B. in English from Harvard in 1958, followed by a M.Ed. in Harvard Graduate School of Education. During the year 1960–1961 he studied sociology at the London School of Economics. He has previously held positions at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

His interests are in the study of education, social stratification, social mobility, family structure, poverty and the poor. Prior to his university career, he was an editor at The New Republic from 1961 to 1967 and a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC from 1963 to 1967. He served as an editor of The American Prospect. He has published essays in The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.

Selected bibliography

 * The Academic Revolution (with David Riesman, 1968, reissued 2001)
 * Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effects of Family and Schooling in America (with seven co-authors, 1972)
 * Who Gets Ahead? (with eleven co-authors, 1979)
 * The Urban Underclass (with Paul Peterson, 1991)
 * Rethinking Social Policy (1992)
 * The Homeless (1994)
 * The Black-White Test Score Gap (with Meredith Phillips, 1998)

Prizes, awards and honors
Jencks has received awards for his work on different topics within sociology. For his work with David Riesman documenting "the rise to power of professional scholars and scientists", he has received the 1968 Borden Prize for Best Book on Higher Education. For his book on inequality he was the co-recipient of the 1974 Best Book in Sociology award from the American Sociological Association. For his book and articles on homelessness, he has received the 1994 Best Book in Sociology and Anthropology from Association of American Publishers, and the 1995 Harry Chapin Media Award.

He has also received the 1992 Willard Waller Award for lifetime achievement.

Richwine controversy
Jencks was part of the dissertation committee at Harvard's Kennedy School that in 2009 awarded Jason Richwine – a former member of The Heritage Foundation – a PhD for his thesis, "IQ and Immigration Policy". Criticized for the way it linked race to IQ levels, the thesis lost Richwine his job at the Foundation. According to an article in The Nation by journalist and historian Jon Wiener, Jencks was "for decades a leading figure among liberals who did serious research on inequality ..." and knew exactly what was "wrong with the studies purporting to link 'race' with 'IQ'." When Wiener asked if Jencks would comment on issues involving the PhD, he replied, "Nope. But thanks for asking."