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'Evicted' Selected to 2017 PEN Literary Awards Longlist

December 9, 2016

PEN America | Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, is one of 10 books on the 2017 PEN America longlist in nonfiction for the John Kenneth Galbraith award. Finalists for this biennial award will be announced on January 18, 2017. The winner will be announced on February 22, 2017 and honored at the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on March 27, 2017. Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Science at Harvard.



'Evicted' selected for 2017 Shortlist: Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence

October 26, 2016

Matthew Desmond's Evicted is one of six books (3 fiction, 3 nonfiction) named to the Shortlist for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The citation reads, "This is essential reading for anyone interested in social justice, poverty, and feminist issues, but its narrative nonfiction style will also draw general readers—and will hopefully spark national discussion."  The two medal winners will be announced January 22, 2017. Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard.



'Evicted' is a finalist for C.Wright Mills Award

May 12, 2017

Society for the Study of Social Problems | The Society for the Study of Social Problems announced its five finalists for its 2016 C. Wright Mills Award, including Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences. The prestigious C. Wright Mills Award recognizes the most outstanding book  that "advances social scientific understanding" on "an issue of contemporary public importance." The winner will be announced on August 12, 2017, at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.



'Evicted' honored with 2017 PEN New England Award

March 22, 2017

PEN New England | Sociologist Matthew Desmond's Evicted has won the 2017 PEN New England Award for Nonfiction. Earlier thiis year, Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, was named the recipient of PEN America's John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.



'Evicted' Book Paints a Heartbreaking Picture of a Milwaukee Under Stress

March 1, 2016

WUWM—Milwaukee Public Radio | Interview with Matthew Desmond. [Text and audio: 25 minutes]



'Evicted' awarded 2017 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism

April 25, 2017

Awardee | Matthew Desmond is the recipient of the 2017 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, for "investigative reporting and deep storytelling in the service of the common good." The Sidney Hillman Foundation honors the legacy of union leader and New Deal architect Sidney Hillman (1887-1946).



'Desperate but not hopeless times'

November 16, 2016

Harvard Gazette | Coverage of the the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies’ annual Summit on the Future of Europe. 

"Peter A. Hall, Harvard’s Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies, warned that in addition to its debt, banking, and growth crises, Europe faces a political one, with declining levels of trust in government and a shift away from mainstream politics. Hall argued that EU leaders worsened or caused the problem by seeking a “fuller fiscal or political union” in response to the Eurozone crisis, an approach that he said deprives national electorates of the sense that their governments are accountable."
View the conference agenda... Read more about 'Desperate but not hopeless times'



'Deportation Nation'

March 2, 2017

Radio Open Source | Harvard's Mary Waters, John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology, and Roberto Gonzales, Assistant Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, join Daniel Kanstroom, Professor of Law at Boston College and author of  Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History.

From Radio Open Source:
Mary Waters, sociologist at Harvard, is increasingly concerned by the parallels between mass deportation and mass incarceration. She termed the phenomenon “crimmigration.” In order to resist this system, she writes, “we need a model of a social movement that is not based in civil rights, because we have defined millions of people living in this country as being outside of civil society.“

Roberto Gonzales spent 12 years following the lives of undocumented teenagers in Los Angeles. His heart-breaking account in Lives in Limbo paints a tragic portrait of squandered potential and unrealized dreams. For undocumented teenagers, adulthood marks a transition to illegality — a period of ever-narrowing opportunities. One teenager named Esperanza lamented to Roberto: “I would have been the walking truth instead of a walking shadow.”



'Brexit' Hits U.S. Stock Market Harder than an Election

June 24, 2016

The New York Times | By Justin Wolfers (Ph.D. '01), University of Michigan. "While market reactions are surely neither as rational nor as carefully calibrated as the theory suggests, at least they provide a useful quantification of the conventional wisdom. And that conventional wisdom seems to be that Britain’s exit from the European Union will lead to economic disruption that will echo across the Atlantic."



'Brace in Chiraq' Documentary Goes Beyond the Violence

July 29, 2015

Chicago Magazine | Robert Sampson

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