Christopher Jencks

Jencks was part of the dissertation committee at Harvard's Kennedy School that in 2009 awarded Jason Richwine – a former member of The Heritage Foundation – a PhD for his thesis, "IQ and Immigration Policy". Criticized for the way it linked race to IQ levels, the thesis lost Richwine his job at the Foundation. According to an article in The Nation by journalist and historian Jon Wiener, Jencks was "for decades a leading figure among liberals who did serious research on inequality ..." and knew exactly what was "wrong with the studies purporting to link 'race' with 'IQ'." When Wiener asked if Jencks would comment on issues involving the PhD, he replied, "Nope. But thanks for asking."

His interests are in the study of education, social stratification, social mobility, poverty and the poor. His recent research concerns changes in family structure over the past generation, the costs and benefits of economic inequality, the extent to which economic advantages are inherited and the effects of welfare reform. Prior to his university career, he was an editor at The New Republic from 1961 to 1967 and a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC from 1963 to 1967. He served as an editor of The American Prospect. He has published more than three dozen pieces in The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.

Jencks is currently the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1954 and was president of the school's newspaper, the Exonian, as a senior. After Exeter, he received an A.B. in English literature from Harvard in 1958, followed by a M.Ed. in Harvard Graduate School of Education. During the year 1960-1961 he studied sociology at the London School of Economics. He has previously held positions at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Christopher Sandy Jencks (born October 22, 1936) is an American social scientist.