Bruce Western

Bruce Western is President Elect of the Russell Sage Foundation and formerly the Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice at Columbia University and Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Western’s research examines social and economic inequality in the United States with a specific focus on labor unions, income inequality, incarceration, and criminal justice policy. Western was born in Canberra, Australia in 1964 and grew up in Brisbane, Australia. In 1987, he took his BA (Hons.) in government from the University of Queensland in Australia in 1987 before going to the United States where he received a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993. Western taught in the Sociology Department at Princeton University from 1993 to 2007, in the Sociology Department and the Kennedy School at Harvard University from 2007 to 2018, and then at the Sociology Department at Columbia University from 2018 to 2024. He was appointed President of the Russell Sage Foundation in July 2025. Western is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Philosophical Society.