​About Robin M. Williams Jr.

Robin Murphy Williams (1914-2006) was born on October 11, 1914, in Hillsborough, NC, the son of Robin M., Sr. (a farmer), and Mabel (a homemaker). He received his B.S. in 1933 from North Carolina State College; his M.S. in 1935 from N.C. State and the University of North Carolina; his M.A. in 1939 from Harvard University; and his Ph.D. in 1943 from Harvard University. During World War II, he served in the Special Services Division of the US War Department in Washington, D.C., and the European Theater of Operations from 1942 to 1946.

As an Army researcher on the frontlines, he was a contributor to the classic work, The American Soldier. For much of his long and distinguished career at Cornell University (from 1946 to 1985, then emeritus from 1985 to 2003), he was a member of the Sociology Department. He served as chair of that Department from 1956 through 196l and was appointed the Henry Scarborough Professor of Social Science in 1967. After becoming Professor Emeritus in 1985, Williams continued to teach at both Cornell University and the University of California, Irvine. His research fostered understanding of some of the most difficult problems of American society. He devoted much of his career and writing to studies of intergroup tensions, race relations, war and peace, ethnic conflict, and altruism and cooperation.

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Dr. Williams was a Past-President of the American Sociological Association, Past-President of the Eastern Sociological Association, Founding Editor of Sociological Forum, and the Co-Chair of the Committee on the Status of Black Americans. Dr. Williams’ many awards and honors include the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service, the American Sociological Association’s Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, and the Robin M. Williams, Jr. Distinguished Lectureship Award established by the Eastern Sociological Association.

His best-known works include The American Soldier (Vols. 1-11, 1949); Schools in Transition (1954); and What College Students Think (1960); The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions (1947); Strangers Next Door (1964), American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (1st edition, 1951; 2nd edition, 1960; 3rd edition, 1970); Mutual Accommodation: Ethnic Conflict and Cooperation (1977); and most recently, The Wars Within: Peoples and States in Conflict (2003). He was also a co-editor of A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (1989). He was the author as well of some hundred and fifty articles, monographs, and chapters in edited volumes.

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To nominate someone for the 2025-2026 Robin M. Williams, Jr. Lecture, please send nominations (self-nominations welcome) in a letter detailing the reasons for the nomination along with no more than two supporting letters to the Committee Chair (Tanya Golash-Boza, tanya.boza@ucdc.edu). 

​To nominate someone for the 2026-2027 Robin M. Williams, Jr. Lecture, please send nominations (self-nominations welcome) in a letter detailing the reasons for the nomination along with no more than two supporting letters to the Committee Chair (Richard Ocejo, rocejo@jjay.cuny.edu).

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2024-25 Lecturer (2024 Award Recipient): Richard E. Ocejo, John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center:

I also direct the MA program in International Migration Studies. I have been the Editor of City & Community, an official journal of the American Sociological Association, since 2021. My most recent book, Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press; 2017), is about the transformation of low-status occupations into "cool," cultural taste-making jobs (cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men's barbers, and whole animal butchers). And my first book, Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City, about nightlife and conflict in gentrified neighborhoods, was also published by Princeton University Press in 2014. My work has appeared in such journals as Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Affairs Review, City & Community, Poetics, and Ethnography. I am also the editor of Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 16: Urban Ethnography: Legacies and Challenges (Emerald, 2019) and Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork (Routledge; 2012) and serve on the editorial boards of the journals Work and Occupations, Metropolitics, and the Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. My current research and forthcoming book examine gentrification and race in a small city through the lens of racial capitalism. My overall research and teaching interests include urban and cultural sociology, community studies, work and occupations, and research methods (especially qualitative methods). Finally, I am a podcast host of the Sociology channel on the New Books Network.

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As part of the Society's attempt to enhance the sharing of ideas, one of our colleagues will be invited to spend time and give lectures on two campuses within the Society's jurisdiction during their year as the Williams Lecturer. The ESS Executive Office will provide transportation and honoraria: the host institution will take care of local arrangements, including room and board. The individual chosen for the Lectureship will receive an honorarium and will present two lectures on campuses in the ESS region during the terms of his or her appointment. (These campuses will be selected on a competitive basis.)

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