Edward Alsworth Ross (1866–1951) was a progressive American sociologist, eugenicist,[1] and major figure of early criminology.
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Biography
Edward A. Ross attended numerous colleges, including Coe College and Johns Hopkins University, where he majored in economics. Ross received his Ph.D. in political economy in 1891 with minors in philosophy and ethics.
Ross was a professor at Indiana University(1891-1892), secretary of the American Economic Association (1892), professor at Cornell University (1892-1893), and professor at Stanford University (1893-1900).[2]
Ross was forced from Stanford because of his objection to Chinese immigrant labour. This position was at odds with the university's founding family, the Stanfords, who had made their fortune in Western rail construction - a major employer of Chinese laborers. Numerous professors at Stanford resigned after protests of his dismissal, sparking "a national debate ... concerning the freedom of expression and control of universities by private interests". [2] Ross left for the University of Nebraska, and later held the position of Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Ross' understanding of Americanization and assimilation bore a striking resemblance to that of another Wisconsin professor, Frederick Jackson Turner. Like Turner, Ross believed that American identity was forged in the crucible of the wilderness. The 1890 census' proclamation that the frontier had disappeared, then, posed a significant threat to America's ability to assimilate the mass of immigrants who were arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe. In 1897, just four years after Turner had presented his frontier thesis to the American Historical Association, Ross, still a professor at Stanford, argued that the loss of the frontier destroyed the machinery of the melting pot process.
Ross supported the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, even as he acknowledged its bloody origins, and was a member of the Dewey Commission, which cleared Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials.[3]
Works
- Social Control (1901)
- Sin and Society (1907)
- Social Psychology (1908)
- The Changing Chinese (1911)
- Changing America (1912)
- The Old World in the New: The Significance of Past and Present Immigration to the American People (1914)
- Italians In America (1914)
- The Principles of Sociology (1920)
- The Russian Bolshevik Revolution (1921)
- The Social Trend (1922)
- The Russian Soviet Republic (1923)
See also
Notes
- ^ Baltzell, E. Digby The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Random House, 1964. P. 105: The findings of the eugenicists quite naturally gave support to the opponents of further immigration. One of the most widely read books on this controversial issue was The Old World in the New, by Edward A. Ross [...] he believed in the conventional myth of Nordic supremacy and the need for a program of positive eugenics in order to preserve our Anglo-Saxon Americanism against pollution through immigration [...] [ending] with a chapter showing how "Immigrant Blood" was slowly polluting the purer "American Blood", as "beaten members of the beaten breeds" swarmed over the beloved land of his own pioneer ancestors. Somewhat obsessed with race, Ross was of course convinced that "the blood being injected into the veins of our people was sub-human"; the newer immigrants were "morally below the races of northern Europe"; and that it all would end in "Race Suicide".
- ^ a b "Edward A. Ross, President 1914-1915". http://www2.asanet.org/governance/Ross.html.
- ^ Dewey Commission Report
| Preceded by Albion Woodbury Small |
President of the American Sociological Association 1914–1915 |
Succeeded by George E. Vincent |
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