Given earlier discussions on this list about academic freedom and the ties to Econ at Wisconsin, I thought some members of this list might be interested in this bio from the American National Biography Online (see end of message for a web site on this excellent resource). Comments welcome. Humberto Barreto American National Biography Online Ross, Edward Alsworth (12 Dec. 1866-22 July 1951), sociologist and writer, was born in Virden, Illinois, the son of William Carpenter Ross, a farmer, and Rachel Alsworth, a schoolteacher. Orphaned by his mother's and father's deaths (1874 and 1876, respectively), Ross was sheltered in turn by three Iowa farm families. Of the latter, Ross regarded Mary Beach as his foster mother. Alexander Campbell, Ross's lawyer guardian, shepherded his inheritance, thereby providing ample funds for his schooling. Completing the A.B. at Coe College (1886), Ross studied for a year at the University of Berlin and traveled in France and England (1888-1889). In 1890 he began graduate work majoring in economics at Johns Hopkins, where his mentors included Richard T. Ely and Woodrow Wilson. With minors in philosophy and ethics, Ross earned the Ph.D. (1891). His doctoral dissertation on the public debt was published as Sinking Funds by the American Economic Association (1892). Also in 1892 Ross married Rosamond Simons, niece of sociologist Lester Frank Ward. Ross looked to Ward as a mentor, observing, "to receive the outpourings of his encyclopedic mind was equivalent to a post-doctoral course." Rosamond Ross was an artist and homemaker who devoted herself to her husband and their three children. Ross rose rapidly in academia, accepting a succession of attractive university posts: Indiana (1891-1892), Cornell (1892-1893), and Stanford (1893-1900). He was elected secretary of the American Economic Association in 1892. A demanding instructor, he assigned to his students challenging readings such as Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology and Lester Frank Ward's Dynamic Sociology. Beyond the classroom, Ross enjoyed giving robust public lectures and Chautauqua-style extension courses for adults. He wrote for popular magazines such as Atlantic Monthly and Century, as well as for scholarly journals, and he became known for his punchy, attention-grabbing literary style, the cream of which enlivens his Capsules of Social Wisdom (1948). Ross's penchant for spirited free speaking erupted in a fin de siecle cataclysm at Stanford University. His increasingly progressive views, free silver advocacy, and general outspokenness collided with Jane Lathrop Stanford, the university's conservative benefactor and powerful guiding hand. Stanford president David Starr Jordan failed to mollify Stanford or curb Ross. Jordan initially vacillated but later capitulated to Stanford's demand that Ross be terminated and curtly dismissed him at year's end (1900). George Elliott Howard, a respected Stanford professor, was then brutally forced by Jordan to resign for having lectured Stanford students on the unfairness of firing Ross. Nearly a half-dozen Stanford faculty resignations ensued to protest the Ross and Howard dismissals, igniting national debate about freedom of expression versus the control of universities by business interests. Ross was exonerated by an investigating committee of the American Economic Association (1901). From this incident grew the organized campaign to secure tenured protection for American academics. The collapse of sociology at Stanford was exploited by the University of Nebraska, whose populist faction obtained Ross's services as professor of sociology in 1901 and in 1904 created a professorship for Howard. The collegial efforts of Ross, Howard, and a young law professor, Roscoe Pound, briefly made Nebraska a sociological powerhouse. Directly influenced by Ross, Pound devised and promulgated "sociological jurisprudence," the assumption that law is a living body of practices rather than a fixed set of rules derived from unchanging premises, a perspective that dominated American legal thinking during much of the twentieth century. Ross accomplished his most important intellectual work while at Nebraska. He published a revised series of articles as Social Control (1901), in which he identified the collective factors that promote societal stability, and he wrote a comprehensive, systematic theory of society, Foundations of Sociology (1905). Before leaving Nebraska, he finished the manuscript for Social Psychology (1908), in which he extended the ideas of French sociologist Gabriel Tarde. And, meeting informally around his desk, Ross, Howard, and Pound established the topic outline for what became Ross's Principles of Sociology (1920). In 1906 Ross accepted an attractive offer from the University of Wisconsin to join its economics department under the reins of his former teacher, Richard T. Ely. He was appointed professor of sociology and, as the only sociologist, developed course offerings along his own lines. Selected to guide a separately formed Department of Sociology and Anthropology in 1929, Ross chaired the Wisconsin department from 1929 to 1937 and was further honored with election to professor emeritus in 1937. The progressive political element in Wisconsin suited Ross well, stimulating his pen and public appearances. His popular essay on the evils of irresponsible financial greed, Sin and Society (1907), garnered public endorsement from President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), who noted, "With almost all that you write I am in full and hearty sympathy." Ross thus proudly joined a cadre of popular reform-oriented authors, including William Allen White and Upton Sinclair. Ross was twice elected to the presidency of the American Sociological Society (1914, 1915). As president, he sponsored ASS sessions on freedom of expression and appointed his friend Roscoe Pound, then at the Harvard Law School, to represent the ASS on an interdisciplinary committee that became the mechanism for founding the American Association of University Professors. Believing that sociology should be an active and socially responsible discipline, Ross later counseled his fellow ASS members, "There may come a time in the career of every sociologist when it is his solemn duty to raise hell." Ross was adventuresome, a well-seasoned traveler, and a world student. He revisited Europe during his first sabbatical opportunity for independent studies at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and at the British Museum in London (1898-1899). Subsequent, extended globe-trotting included China and Japan (1910), western South America (1913-1914), Russia (1917), Mexico (1922), Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa (1924), India (1924-1925), Europe and the Soviet Union (1934), a round-the-world cruise as education director of the Floating University (1928-1929), and a medically advised rest in Tahiti (1932). His travels unearthed empirical fodder for numerous articles and travel books whose royalties, in turn, funded further treks. Popular works in this genre included The Changing Chinese (1911), South of Panama (1915), Russia in Upheaval (1918), The Russian Bolshevik Revolution (1921), The Social Revolution in Mexico (1923), and The Russian Soviet Republic (1923). Ross's Tahitian idylls ended with the unexpected news of his wife's death in the United States in 1932. A reflective Ross wrote his autobiography in 1936, eschewing earlier views about racial superiority with which he had become associated. He also revealed his gradual and complete disillusionment with religion. He married Helen Forbes, a well-known social worker, in 1940. They had no children. As capstone to his long crusade for freedom of expression, Ross served as national chair of the American Civil Liberties Union (1940-1950). He died at home in Madison, Wisconsin. Ross was a tireless, enthusiastic advocate for professional sociology, and his work materially shaped the founding contours of that discipline at the turn of the century. His legacy today is the near-universal recognition of the right to freedom of expression by academics worldwide. Bibliography Letters from Ross are in the Edward A. Ross Papers and the Richard T. Ely Papers in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library; the Edward A. Ross Papers and the George Elliott Howard Papers in the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Library; the Roscoe Pound Papers in the Harvard University Law School Library; and the Ross Controversy Papers, the David Starr Jordan Papers, and the Jane Lathrop Stanford Papers in the Stanford University Library. See also "The Ward-Ross Correspondence, 1891-1912," American Sociological Review 3 (1938): 362-401; 11 (1946): 593-605, 734-48; 12 (1947): 703-20; 13 (1948): 82-94; and 14 (1949): 88-119. His autobiography is Seventy Years of It (1936). Accounts of his Nebraska work are found in Bruce Keith, "The Foundations of an American Discipline: Edward A. Ross at the University of Nebraska, 1901-1906," Mid-American Review of Sociology 13, no. 2 (1988): 43-56, and Michael R. Hill, "Roscoe Pound and American Sociology" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1989). His work in Wisconsin is discussed in Julius Weinberg, Edward Alsworth Ross and the Sociology of Progressivism (1972). A bibliography of his writings is found in Joyce O. Hertzler, "Edward Alsworth Ross: Sociological Pioneer and Interpreter," American Sociological Review 16 (1951): 597-613. For additional insights, see Committee of Economists, Report of the Committee of Economists on the Dismissal of Professor Ross from Leland Stanford Junior University (1901); John L. Gillin, "The Personality of Edward Alsworth Ross," American Journal of Sociology 42 (1937): 534-42; William L. Kolb, "The Sociological Theories of Edward Alsworth Ross," in Harry Elmer Barnes, An Introduction to the History of Sociology (1948); and Roscoe C. Hinkle, Founding Theory of American Sociology 1881-1915 (1980). An obituary is in the New York Times, 23 July 1951. Michael R. Hill Back to the top Citation: Michael R. Hill. "Ross, Edward Alsworth"; http://www.anb.org/articles/14/14-00522.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. 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