Kenneth Prewitt

Focus areas: Writing on the future of scholarly knowledge, public policy

On Leave for the 2022-2023 Academic Year

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs and Special Advisor to the University President. Prewitt's professional career includes: Director of the United States Census Bureau, Director of the National Opinion Research Center, President of the Social Science Research Council, and Senior Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Russell-Sage Foundation. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, honorary degrees from Carnegie Mellon and Southern Methodist University, a Distinguished Service Award from the New School for Social Research, the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany, the Charles E. Merriam Lifetime Career Award, American Political Science Association.

Prewitt holds a BA from Southern Methodist University (1958); MA from Washington University (1959), Harvard Divinity School (1960) as a Danforth fellow; PhD from Stanford University (1963).

His most recent book is What is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans. He has authored or coauthored another half-dozen books and more than 100 articles and book chapters.

Education

• PhD, Stanford University
• MA, Washington University
• BA, Southern Methodist University
• Harvard Divinity School: Danforth fellow

Affiliations

• Lifetime National Associate, NRC/NAS