Sociologist to Discuss Race, Neighborhood Crime in Urban Areas
Ruth D. Peterson
DELAWARE, OHIO – Ruth D. Peterson, Ph.D., a retired sociology professor and faculty member at The Ohio State University’s Criminal Justice Research Center, will discuss “Race and Neighborhood Crime in U.S. Urban Areas” at 7 p.m. March 21 in Ohio Wesleyan University’s Phillips Hall Auditorium, 50 S. Henry St.
Peterson will present Ohio Wesleyan’s 2012 Butler A. Jones Lectureship on Race and Society, sponsored by the OWU Department of Sociology. The event is free and open to the public.
For much of the past 20 years, Peterson has collaborated with Lauren J. Krivo, Ph.D., of Rutgers University to research crime rates, trying to account for differences across various race-ethnic groups and across communities of different colors.
Peterson and Krivo’s 2010 book, “Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide,” focuses on their research, telling the story of neighborhood crime as an outgrowth of racialized social structure in U.S. urban areas. Peterson’s talk will provide an overview of the book’s primary findings.
Ohio Wesleyan’s Butler A. Jones Lectureship on Race and Society was established in 1995 in honor of Jones, Ph.D., a former sociology/anthropology faculty member. In contributing to the quest for equality among races, Jones submitted 10 briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving equal treatment of all citizens and completed background research for the 1940 Carnegie-Myrdal Study of African Americans. He also was heavily involved in the field of sociology and committed to the development of other scholars and professionals.
Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier small, private universities, with more than 90 undergraduate majors, sequences, and courses of study, and 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Located in Delaware, Ohio, just minutes north of Ohio’s capital and largest city, Columbus, the university combines a globally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities that translate classroom theory into real-world practice. OWU’s close-knit community of 1,850 students represents 47 states and 57 countries. Ohio Wesleyan was named to the 2010 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with distinction, is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” and is included on the “best colleges” lists of U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review. Learn more at www.owu.edu.