Research/Areas of Interest

Industrial and Urban U.S., Immigration

Education

  • PhD, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States, 1981
  • MA, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States, 1976
  • MA, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States, 1973
  • BA, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States, 1970

Biography

I study the effects of industrialization and globalization in U. S. history. I first worked as Research Editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (awarded the Waldo Leland Prize of the American Historical Association). I also authored Avenues to Adulthood (on social mobility) and Postwar Immigrant America. I have also edited The New Americans (with Mary C. Waters and Helen Marrow), and America's Changing Neighborhoods (selected as a Best Reference Work by Library Journal.)

A member of the History Department faculty since 1981, I co-chair a consortium in which Tufts is a participating institution, the Inter-University Committee on International Migration at the MIT Center for International Studies, and am also a Research Associate at the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard. I have written for the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and the New Republic. I am currently at work on a book about immigration and citizenship and a U.S. history textbook.