The Morris Rosenberg Memorial Lectureship was established in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland to pay tribute to the scholarly contributions made by Dr. Rosenberg. The lectureship brings eminent sociologists to campus who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the discipline. The inaugural Rosenberg Lecture was given by Charles Tilly in October 1999. Since then, the Lectureship has brought some of the most prominent sociologists to speak to the UMD Sociology community.
On November 8, 2024, Dr. Adia Harvey Wingfield will give this year's lecture, titled "From Discrimination to DEI: The Possibilities and Limits of Addressing Race in the Workplace."
In the US, work has long served to perpetuate racial inequality, with workers of color historically locked out of jobs that could provide pathways to economic security. In the late 20th century, legal and policy interventions sought some limited redress, with efforts to expand occupational opportunities to groups who had previously been systematically excluded. Yet those policies were tailored to address historic forms of discrimination and failed to account for rapidly changing workplaces, labor practices, and racial demographics. In this presentation, I consider how these failures limited social policy ostensibly designed to broaden occupational pathways, and how future interventions and organizations can rectify these mistakes.
Adia Harvey Wingfield is the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts & Sciences and Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research examines how and why racial and gender inequality persists in professional occupations. Professor Wingfield has lectured internationally on her research in this area, and her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals including Annual Review of Sociology, Gender & Society, and American Sociological Review. She has served as President of both Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) and the Southern Sociological Society (SSS), and is an elected member of the Sociological Research Association. In addition to her academic scholarship, Professor Wingfield writes regularly for mainstream outlets including Slate, The Atlantic, Vox, and Harvard Business Review. She is the recipient of multiple awards including the 2013 Richard A. Lester Award from Princeton University for her book No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men’s Work; the 2018 Public Understanding of Sociology award from the American Sociological Association; and the 2019 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) for her most recent book, Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy.
